New Delhi - Flooding in the densely populated Indian state of West Bengal has swamped hundreds of villages, killing three people and making more than 650 000 homeless, local officials said on Sunday.
Authorities said heavy rain had caused several rivers, including the powerful Ichhamati river, to break their banks.
In the central Murishidabad district, three people have been killed in house collapses since Friday.
Hundreds of people were stranded on roofs of their homes waiting to be rescued. Over 50 000 mud houses have been damaged in the flooding which began early last week, officials said.
Authorities in West Bengal, in eastern India, have set up 250 shelters, including many in schools, for the homeless.
"We are trying hard to provide relief materials like grain to the homeless with the help of NGOs (non-governmental organisations)," Shankar Kumar Mandal, a state relief department official, said by telephone.
More than 2 000 people have died in South Asia since annual monsoon rains began to lash the region in June, bringing widespread flooding and making millions of people homeless in riverine eastern India and Bangladesh.
Large swathes of land are under water in Bangladesh, reeling from a second wave of monsoon flooding caused by the heaviest downpours in more than half a century over the past 10 days.