Five people, including a child, drowned in separate incidents in the west of Assam state Monday, a police spokesman said.

"All the five died in separate incidents when their wooden boats capsized as they were trying to escape the fury of the floods," the spokesman said.

The floods that began on June 27 had earlier claimed the lives of 13 people in Assam and the nearby states of Meghalaya and Tripura.

An outbreak of malaria and water-borne diseases in flood-hit areas was making life even more difficult.

At least 73 people have so far died of malaria and Japanese encephalitis since the beginning of June.

"The flood situation is very critical in parts of western and eastern Assam with heavy rains all over the area," Assam Flood Control Minister Nurzamal Sarkar told AFP.

At least 200,000 more people were left homeless after the Brahmaputra River burst its banks at several places overnight washing away homes and breaching roads and mud embankments, local officials and police said.

The worst-hit areas in Assam have been the eastern districts of Dhemaji, Jorhat and North Lakhimpur, besides northern Darrang and Sonitpur districts.

Dhemaji, 460 kilometers (285 miles) east of Assam's capital Guwahati, has been cut off from the rest of the state since June 12 and an estimated 100,000 people have been hit in the district by floods.

"Rows and rows of villages were swept away with people in thousands taking shelter in makeshift tarpaulin tents or on higher ground," Dilip Saikia, a local lawmaker in Dhemaji, told AFP.

Heavy monsoon rains triggered mudslides in many parts of Arunachal Pradesh state, northeast of here bordering Chinese ruled Tibet, with road links to capital Itanagar snapped for the past one week, the state's flood control minister Sonsam Nemu said by telephone.

Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless in neighbouring Bangladesh, where 67 people have been reported dead by the floods.

Another 200,000 people are estimated to have been left stranded by floods in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

TERRA.WIRE