Packed hospitals in eastern India struggled to cope with people suffering waterborne diseases today and marooned villagers clashed with police as some of the worst floods in living memory ravaged South Asia.
More than 250 people have died over the past 11 days after torrential monsoon rains that caused rivers to burst their banks in the region, including much of Bangladesh.
More than 35 million people have been affected by the floods in South Asia. About 10 million are homeless or cut off in their villages, with little or no access to food and health care.
Health workers and aid groups in Assam in northeast India were working around the clock to treat and feed many of the 3 million people displaced or surrounded by flood waters in the state with the limited medicines and supplies available.
Hospital wards in affected areas were full.
Elsewhere, villagers were getting desperate and hungry.
"Our family survived for a week on buffalo milk but now the animal has stopped producing milk as it has gone without food for days," said Meghu Yadav, a villager in the Samastipur district of impoverished Bihar state.
Many people were suffering from diarrhoea, dysentery and fever. Officials have warned of outbreaks of malaria. State officials in Bihar raised the death toll there by 20 to 77.
Every year monsoon rains leave a trail of death and destruction across South Asia, but much of the economy of a largely agricultural region depends on the downpours.
Latest available Indian government figures cited by UNICEF say that over 1,100 people have died in this year's monsoon.
The United Nations Children's Fund has said the scale of the disaster posed an "unprecedented challenge" for aid workers.
"The victims are left to survive on their own," said an aid worker with an Indian voluntary agency supervising relief work in Guwahati, Assam's main city.