New Delhi:

India on Sunday sent urgent relief materials to Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam under an operation christened ‘Sadbhav’ to assist them in dealing with the impact of a major typhoon.

Various parts of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam have been reeling under massive floods after Typhoon Yagi, said to be Asia’s most powerful storm this year, hit the three countries.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said 10 tonnes of aid including dry ration, clothing and medicines were dispatched to Myanmar onboard Indian naval ship INS Satpura.

A military transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force is carrying 35 tonnes of aid to Vietnam and 10 tonnes of relief materials to Laos.

“India launches #OperationSadbhav. Demonstrating our solidarity with the people affected by Typhoon Yagi, India is dispatching aid to Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos,” Jaishankar said on ‘X’.

“10 tons of aid including dry ration, clothing and medicines left for Myanmar onboard @indiannavy INS Satpura today,” he said.

Jaishankar added: “@IAF_MCC is carrying 35 tons of aid comprising of water purification items, water containers, blankets, kitchen utensils, solar lanterns for Vietnam.” “10 tons of aid comprising genset, water purification items, hygiene supplies, mosquito nets, blankets and sleeping bags for Laos,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

India on Sunday sent urgent relief materials to Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam under an operation christened ‘Sadbhav’ to assist them in dealing with the impact of a major typhoon.

Various parts of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam have been reeling under massive floods after Typhoon Yagi, said to be Asia’s most powerful storm this year, hit the three countries.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said 10 tonnes of aid including dry ration, clothing and medicines were dispatched to Myanmar onboard Indian naval ship INS Satpura.

A military transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force is carrying 35 tonnes of aid to Vietnam and 10 tonnes of relief materials to Laos.

“India launches #OperationSadbhav. Demonstrating our solidarity with the people affected by Typhoon Yagi, India is dispatching aid to Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos,” Jaishankar said on ‘X’.

“10 tons of aid including dry ration, clothing and medicines left for Myanmar onboard @indiannavy INS Satpura today,” he said.

Jaishankar added: “@IAF_MCC is carrying 35 tons of aid comprising of water purification items, water containers, blankets, kitchen utensils, solar lanterns for Vietnam.” “10 tons of aid comprising genset, water purification items, hygiene supplies, mosquito nets, blankets and sleeping bags for Laos,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Local residents travel by boat on a flooded road in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The death toll in Myanmar in the wake of Typhoon Yagi has jumped to 74, state media reported on Sunday (September 15, 2024), a day after its junta made a rare request for foreign aid.

Floods and landslides have killed almost 350 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which hit the region last weekend, according to official figures.

In Myanmar, the floods “resulted in 74 deaths and 89 people missing” as of Friday evening, the Global New Light of Myanmar said.

Search and rescue operations were ongoing, it said, adding that the floods had destroyed more than 65,000 houses and five dams, heaping further misery on the country where war has raged since the military’s 2021 coup.

The junta’s previous death toll was 33, with more than 235,000 people displaced, according to figures released on Friday.

Swathes of farmland have been inundated in central regions, including around the sprawling, low-lying capital Naypyidaw.

There have been reports of landslides in hilly areas but with roads and bridges damaged and phone and internet lines down, compiling information has been difficult.

The Sittaung and Bago rivers, which flow through central and southern Myanmar, were both still above dangerous levels on Sunday, state media said, athough water levels were expected to fall in the coming days.

Authorities in Myanmar had opened 82 “relief camps” to house displaced people, according to state media.

Thailand’s weather office warned Sunday of further heavy rain in provinces along the Mekong river.

Request for aid

The floods have heaped more misery on Myanmar, where more than 2.7 million people have already displaced by conflict.

Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request for foreign aid to deal with the floods, state media reported on Saturday.

The military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.

Last year it suspended travel authorisations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.

On Saturday, the UN’s Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) in Myanmar and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told AFP they could not currently comment on the junta’s request.

Heavy monsoon rains lash Southeast Asia every year, but human-made climate change is causing more intense weather patterns that can make destructive floods more likely.

Climate change is causing typhoons to form closer to the coast, intensify faster and stay longer over land, according to a study published in July.

Flood-affected residents use tyre tubes as flotation devices in Taungoo, Myanmar’s Bago region on September 14, 2024, following heavy rains in the aftermath of Typhoon Yagi. Typhoon Yagi brought a colossal deluge of rain that has inundated a swathe of northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, triggering deadly landslides and widespread river flooding.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar’s junta chief made a rare request Saturday (September 14, 2024) for foreign aid to cope with deadly floods that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people who have already endured three years of war.

Floods and landslides have killed almost 300 people in Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in the wake of Typhoon Yagi, which dumped a colossal deluge of rain when it hit the region last weekend.

In Myanmar, more than 235,000 people have been forced from their homes by floods, the junta said Friday, piling further misery on the country where war has raged since the military seized power in 2021.

In Taungoo — around an hour south of the capital Naypyidaw — residents paddled makeshift rafts on floodwaters lapping around a Buddhist pagoda.

Rescuers drove a speedboat through the waters, lifting sagging electricity lines and broken tree branches with a long pole.

“I lost my rice, chickens, and ducks,” said farmer Naung Tun, who had brought his three cows to higher ground near Taungoo after floodwaters innundated his village.

“I don’t care about the other belongings. Nothing else is more important than the lives of people and animals,” he told AFP.

Flee by any means

The rains in the wake of typhoon Yagi sent people across Southeast Asia fleeing by any means necessary, including by elephant in Myanmar and jetski in Thailand.

“Officials from the government need to contact foreign countries to receive rescue and relief aid to be provided to the victims,” junta chief Min Aung Hlaing said on Friday, according to the Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

“It is necessary to manage rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures as quickly as possible,” he was quoted as saying.

Myanmar’s military has previously blocked or frustrated humanitarian assistance from abroad.

Last year it suspended travel authorisations for aid groups trying to reach around a million victims of powerful Cyclone Mocha that hit the west of the country.

At the time the United Nations slammed that decision as “unfathomable.”

AFP has contacted a spokesperson for the UN in Myanmar for comment.

After cyclone Nargis killed at least 138,000 people in Myanmar in 2008, the then-junta was accused of blocking emergency aid and initially refusing to grant access to humanitarian workers and supplies.

‘Terrible experience’

The junta gave a death toll on Friday of 33, while earlier in the day the country’s fire department said rescuers had recovered 36 bodies.

A military spokesman said it had lost contact with some areas of the country and was investigating reports that dozens had been buried in landslides in a gold-mining area in central Mandalay region.

Military trucks carried small rescue boats to flood-hit areas around the military-built capital Naypyidaw on Saturday, AFP reporters said.

“Yesterday we had only one meal,” Naung Tun said from near Taungoo.

“It is terrible to experience flooding because we cannot live our lives well when it happens.”

“It can be okay for people who have money. But for the people who have to work day to day for their meals, it is not okay at all.”

More than 2.7 million people were already displaced in Myanmar by conflict triggered by the junta’s 2021 coup.

Vietnam authorities said Saturday that 262 people were dead and 83 missing.

Images from Laos capital Vientiane, meanwhile, showed houses and buildings inundated by the Mekong river.

Flooding triggered by heavy monsoon rains in Myanmar’s southern areas has displaced more than 10,000 people and disrupted traffic on the rail lines that connect the country’s biggest cities, officials and state-run media said on October 9.

A senior official at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Lay Shwe Zin Oo, said constant rainfall in the Bago region that began last week caused flooding in the low-lying areas of its capital, Bago township. She said there were no casualties reported so far, but that more than 10,000 people had to abandon their homes.

Bago township recorded 7.87 inches (200 mm) of rainfall, its highest level in 59 years, Myanmar’s Meteorological Department said on Sunday. Rain or thundershowers was forecast for across the country until Monday evening.

One of the leaders of an emergency rescue team in Bago told The Associated Press that the flooding was at least 7-8 feet (2.44 metres) deep in low-lying areas and 3-4 feet downtown.

“Almost the whole area of the town was flooded,” That Zin Maung, chairman of the Mizzima Thukha Charity Foundation said by phone on Monday.“ It is the third flood in the town this year and the worst in many years. All the monasteries in the town have opened relief camps. Charity organisations are evacuating people from low-lying areas as much as they can.”

A 55-year-old resident of Bago’s Pan Hlaing ward interviewed by phone said the flood waters were about 5-6 feet deep in her neighbourhood, and her family members were living on the second and third floors of their house.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Myanmar’s military government prefers to tightly control the release of information, said the water was still rising steadily in her neighbourhood, which had never flooded badly before.

Social Welfare Ministry official Lay Shwe Zin Oo said people were sheltering in 32 relief camps, schools and Buddhist monasteries in Bago, while the authorities were providing food, drinking water and other essential assistance.

Reports in the state-run Myanmar Alinn newspaper on Monday said trains that departed from Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city in central Myanmar, and from southern Mawlamyine township were halted en route. Scheduled departures from Yangon, the biggest city in the country, were cancelled after rail lines were flooded by the rapid flow of water from mountain torrents and the spillage from dams in the Bago region.

Myanmar Alinn also said some neighbourhoods in Kyaikto township in southern Mon state were flooded by water from mountain torrents and 555 people there were taking shelters in three relief camps on Sunday.

Myanmar experiences extreme weather virtually every year during the monsoon season. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis killed more than 1,38,000 people. In July and August this year, floods in Mon, Kayin and Rakhine states and the regions of Bago and Magway killed five people and displaced about 60,000.