Death toll from South Asian monsoons surpasses 2,000

The death toll from this year's calamitous South Asian monsoons had surpassed 2,000 by Friday after a wild storm hit Pakistan's largest city. India asked doctors to cancel vacations and rushed food and medicine to flooded regions where disease has stricken thousands.

Adding to the misery, the monsoon rains that flood wide stretches of South Asia each year have forced creatures large and small onto whatever dry land can be found, resulting in scores of fatal snake bites.

Relief workers said there was an acute shortage of clean drinking water and medical supplies in parts of northern India, where storms have been heavier than usual this year.

With flooding from two weeks of rains finally receding in northern India, monsoon storms moved west. Heavy winds and rains lashed the Pakistani city of Karachi, destroyed homes and flooding streets. At least 22 bodies were pulled from collapsed homes, said Anwar Kazi, a spokesman for the private relief service Edhi Foundation. Residents waded through waist-deep water in parts of the city of 15 million people.

Vital to farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people, the monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. At least 2,090 people have died so far this year, double the number killed last year. Nearly 600 have died in the past two weeks alone.

More than 1,550 have died in India; 226 have been killed neighboring Bangladesh; 92 in Nepal, and at least 222 in Pakistan, officials said.

The storms have stranded 19 million people in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Nearly 243,000 people were still living in relief camps in India, the Home Ministry said.

The rainfall has been unevenly distributed across India this year due to unusual monsoon patterns, according to the country's Meteorological Department. While parts of central India received less rain, the north faced stronger storms for longer than usual.

The reprieve in the monsoon rains created ponds of stagnant water in India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, and aid workers struggled to stave off a disease epidemic.

"Paramedics visiting affected villages don't have adequate supplies of medicines," Ramakant Rai, chief of state's Voluntary Health Association, said of Uttar Pradesh. He said clean drinking water was running low.

Families lined up for aid finally reaching their villages. In one Uttar Pradesh village, a family rowed a makeshift tube raft to a relief center.

Doctors have treated at least 1,500 people in Uttar Pradesh for diarrhea in the past 10 days, said L.B. Prasad, director-general of the state's health services. Rai's group said the scope of the suffering was greater, with more than 22,000 people coming down with waterborne disease.

In neighboring Bihar state, the government canceled vacations for doctors in flood-ravaged districts, said state Health Minister Chandramohan Rai.

The rains have driven poisonous snakes onto dry land in closer proximity to populations, and hundreds in India have been bitten this season. In neighboring Bangladesh, the government said at least 35 of the 226 people killed in the monsoon have died of snake bites. It has been the country's second-highest cause of death after drowning.

Snakes are not the only dangerous creatures that compete with people for dry land. In India's northeastern Assam state, flooding forced rhinos from their habitat at the Kaziranga National Park last week. Their panicked charges killed one person and injured two others.

"Everything, everyone, is restricted to tiny, tiny islands with very little space," said Romulus Whitaker, a snake expert. "Everyone is crammed in together and the chances of running into snakes, stepping on them, grabbing them and sleeping on them is much, much more."

That's how Paltu Ram, a farmer in his 20s, died.

Stranded with a few hundred villagers on a sliver of land encircled by flood waters in the Bara Banki district of northern India, about 370 miles east of New Delhi, he decided to climb a tree to see if he could spot a rescue boat.

On his way up, he reached for what looked like a brown rope. It wasn't _ and when he grabbed it, the snake recoiled and struck, sinking its fangs into his arm.

"Paltu jumped into water saying he was bitten by snake. Before he could be taken to a doctor he died," said his father, Rameshwar, who couldn't say what kind of snake got his son.

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Associated Press reporters Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, and Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributed to this story.