Elderly residents and small children clung to inflatable tyres as soldiers and police used rope lines to bring them to safety beyond rising floodwater in Cambodia’s western province of Battambang, which is expected to worsen on Sunday.
Hundreds of families in three Cambodian provinces – Pursat, Battambang and Pailin – have been forced to evacuate amid extreme rainfall heralding the arrival of a tropical depression across the Mekong region.
Five people have died with eight still missing as floodwaters inundated more than 33,000 homes and forced more than 26,000 people to evacuate, the official disaster management authority said.
The national highway linking northern Vietnam to the south has been flooded, while airlines cancelled some domestic flights, local media report.
Roads also turned to rivers and water inundated properties in Thailand’s Nakhon Ratchasima province, as residents scrambled to place sandbags and move their belongings to higher ground.
