By Farid Hossain
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 13, 2004; 3:03 PM

NEW DELHI -- Overflowing rivers swamped villages in South Asia on Tuesday, leaving millions of residents stranded in their flooded homes and 272 people dead in the annual monsoon rains, officials and news reports said.

The casualties were the result of waterborne diseases, electrocution, building collapses and drownings since the torrential rains began in mid-June across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

The annual monsoon rains combined with melting snow fill rivers to overflowing with the water flooding land for miles. Houses, schools, railroads and roads have been inundated.

Despite the devastation, the region's residents eagerly await the rains, which guarantee fruitful crops.

With more rain forecast over the next few days in Bangladesh and India's northeast, the flooding was likely to worsen, relief officials said. The rains usually end in September.

In India's eastern Bihar state, some 20 trains were halted after floods washed away a rail line Monday, while authorities in northeastern Assam state asked the Red Cross for help to reach relief to stranded villagers.

Tarum Gogoi, the top elected official in Assam state said officials asked the Red Cross for food, clothes, tents, drinking water and mosquito nets to help more than 2 million victims in 18 of the state's 24 districts. They have also requested doctors, nurses, and medicine.

Floods have killed at least 39 people in Assam, including a family of four who drowned after their boat capsized in flood waters Monday while moving to higher ground in a village 170 miles northeast of the state capital, Gauhati.

Because of the distances and the washed-out communications links, reports take a day or longer to reach state capitals.

The rushing rivers have led to some acts of desperation.

In Bihar, residents of hamlets on opposite banks of a flooded river exchanged gunshots to prevent one other from slicing off chunks of an embankment and thereby diverting the water to the other side, a local administrator told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

No one was injured in the weekend clash in East Champaran district, 80 miles north of the Bihar capital. On Tuesday, four new deaths were reported from the state, pushing the death toll there to 62.

Monsoon rains have also ravaged other parts of the country, claiming 45 lives in southern Kerala state and 17 in northern Uttar Pradesh state. A total of 166 flood-related deaths have been reported in India.

In neighboring Bangladesh, the rains have engulfed 25 of its 64 districts since late last month, stranding more than 3 million people in their flooded homes and killing 54.

The rain-swollen Jamuna River rose out of its banks Tuesday, flooding 40 villages and killing five people, including a mother and her young son in northern Sirajganj district.

Five other people drowned in the northeastern Sylhet and Sunamganj districts where the Surma River overflowed its banks. Elsewhere in the country's north eight other people -- mostly children -- drowned Monday.

Weather officials in Dhaka, the national capital, said the flooding would likely worsen as heavy rains continue and flood waters from neighboring India flow into Bangladesh.

Bangladesh sits in the basins of the region's largest rivers, the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Jamuna, which originate in the Himalayas and run through India before draining into the Bay of Bengal.

In Pakistan, five people were killed by collapsing homes or roofs in Mardan district in the country's northwest. About 50 others were injured late Sunday in several villages in Mardan, 75 miles northwest of the capital, Islamabad.

Rescue workers made the most of improving weather in Nepal and rushed emergency supplies to thousands of people left homeless by monsoon flooding in the country's south, where 47 people have died in the disaster.

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