BANGKOK: Flooding from days of intense rain has killed at least eight people in southern Thailand and forced thousands into evacuation centres in neighbouring Malaysia, officials said on Monday, as authorities ramped up efforts to provide shelter and aid. Floodwater waist-high in some areas has impacted 10 provinces in southern Thailand and eight states in Malaysia, regions spanning hundreds of kilometres that were last year also hard hit by flooding from a seasonal monsoon that killed at least 12 people.
Thailand’s southern trading hub Hat Yai on Friday suffered its heaviest single-day rainfall in more than 300 years, according to the irrigation department, with weekend television footage showing people wading through brown water in the teeming rain in commercial areas where shops and parked motorcycles were engulfed by water. Some residents were seen pulling children along in plastic boxes turned into makeshift boats, while in the city’s outskirts, parked trucks and buses formed long lines along the few dry roads available as other vehicles inched slowly through water. — Reuters
