The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Chandpur Bhangaha

Efforts to rescue tens of thousands of villagers cut off by a monsoon-swollen river in northern India were reaching a critical stage Thursday, aid workers and evacuees said.

Those who have escaped Bihar state's worst-hit areas say food is running out and people are drinking the muddy flood water, while aid workers speak of "grim" conditions.

"We haven't had anything to eat for five days," said Murti Shah, who finally got out of her village in worst-hit Madhepura district after spending two weeks on the school's rooftop eating through the family's supplies of grain.

"We drank the flood waters."

Asked if she had boiled the water first, she looked amazed.

"How would we boil it?" she asked. "We have no utensils. We have nothing. Everything is under water."

Many villagers in the area, submerged after the Kosi river breached its defences upstream in Nepal and swung east, have lost their lives trying to make it to safety.

"My uncle was on a tree and when he tried to get down he was washed away by the current," said 30-year-old Anil Kumar Bhaskar, who also made it out Wednesday on a navy boat. "Later we found his body in the reeds."

State government warnings to evacuate when the river first broke through its flood walls have kept the death toll low, with some 100 people drowned so far even though the floods have affected at least three million.

Over 600,000 people have been evacuated from flooded areas, but rescuing the estimated 350,000 villagers still stranded in the coming days is vital to prevent more deaths, rescuers and survivors say.

"We are getting to areas we haven't been able to get to before," said Rajeev Ahluwalia, an assistant commander with India's new National Disaster Response Force set up after the 2004 tsunami, in Chandpur Bhangaha.

"It's very grim. The people there are in pathetic conditions," he said as he set off on a final rescue late Wednesday afternoon.