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Malaysia Floods Kill 5, Displace Over 70,000
At least five people have died and more than 70,000 have rushed to shelters after monsoon floods hit northern Malaysia on Wednesday, officials said.
More than 31,000 people fled their homes in Kelantan after the floods began over the weekend, and more than 39,000 residents took refuge in emergency shelters in nearby Terengganu, the official Bernama news agency said.
A total of five people were killed, rescuers said.
“The water level reached almost three meters,” Muhammad Aminuddin Badrul Hisham of Kuala Rai district, Kelantan, told his AFP. A nearby river flooded, forcing the family to evacuate.
Local media reported four of his deaths in Kelantan on Monday. Three sisters were electrocuted while walking in floodwaters, and a 15-month-old boy drowned. The fifth victim was a two-year-old girl who was swept away by strong currents in Terengganu on Sunday.
Other evacuations took place in the states of Pahang, Johor and Perak, Bernama reported.
Flooding is an annual phenomenon in the Southeast Asian country of 33 million people, caused by the northeast monsoon, which brings heavy rains between November and March.
In the same month last year, the country was hit by the worst floods in its history, killing more than 50 people and displacing thousands more. Malaysia’s newly elected Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim on Wednesday visited a school in Kelantan, which is being used as a disaster site and shelter.
Anwar, who is also finance minister, said in parliament on Tuesday that the government had initially allocated his 400 million Malaysian ringgit ($90 million) to the National Disaster Management Agency to deal with the emergency.
Civil protection officials said they were monitoring flooding conditions from above in the worst-hit areas.
