Officials warned that the water level in the Brahmaputra river was expected to rise by 11 cm (4.3 inches), two weeks after it burst its banks swamping more than 2,500 villages.

Assam, famous for its tea plantations, is hit by flooding every rainy season despite flood-control efforts.

Rights groups accuse corrupt officials of siphoning off funds meant for flood projects, resulting in shoddy construction of embankments which are often breached.

Floods have also inundated the Kaziranga National Park, home to the world’s largest concentration of one-horned rhinoceros, with an estimated 2,500 out of a total population of some 3,000 of the animals, was on the brink of extinction at the turn of the century.

Kaziranga park is also a Unesco World Heritage site. But this year’s monsoon rains have almost 85% of the park under water.
“Nine rhinos have drowned and over 100 other animals have been killed,” Atul Bora, Assam’s agriculture minister said.

With the park waist-deep in water, rhinos, elephants and deer have been forced to seek refuge on roads and in human settlements.
Dozens of other animals, including deer, buffalo and porcupines, have also been died – many due to drowning, although others were hit by vehicles as they attempted to escape the floodwaters.

Across Assam, heavy rain has submerged thousands of villages. Hundreds of relief camps have been set up to shelter those displaced.

This year’s floods come as India struggles to halt the spread of coronavirus, with more than one million cases reported across the country, the world’s third-largest case load.

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More than a million people were forced to flee their homes in Assam, northeast India after heavy flooding triggered by monsoon rains.

The Brahmaputra River, one of the largest rivers in the world which flows from Tibet into India and then into Bangladesh, burst its banks in Assam over the weekend, inundating more than 2,000 villages, and it was still raining on Monday.

Two people have died in separate incidents of drowning in the past 24 hours and more than one million people have been affected, according to a state government flood bulletin said.

Torrential rain hit at least 23 of Assam’s 33 districts and the federal water resources body said water levels in the Brahmaputra were expected to rise, with more rain forecast over the next three days.

The flood situation remains extremely grave with several embankments breached, according to an official

Most of the Kaziranga National Park, home to the rare one-horned rhino, was under water, authorities said.

Paramilitary personnel were deployed across the state for rescue operations and to ensure people maintain social distance in makeshift shelter camps to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, authorities said.

Assam has so far reported 7,492 coronavirus infections and 11 deaths.

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