Saturday, 3 October 2009

Ketsana toll in Laos rises to 24


(Post by CAAI News Media)

3 October 2009, HANOI - The death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana in Laos has risen to 24, the country’s Red Cross said on Saturday.

Seven people who refused to leave their homes in southernmost Attapeu province accounted for most of the additional deaths, said Bountheung Menvilay, head of the agency’s disaster preparedness division.

Their houses were swept into a river, he said.

On Friday, when details of the tragedy began to emerge from one of Asia’s poorest nations, Bountheung reported 16 deaths from the storm which moved through the country on Wednesday.

Ketsana has brought devastation across Southeast Asia, first killing at least 293 people in the Philippines last weekend before striking Vietnam, where 99 died, and Cambodia where it claimed 17 lives.

Attapeu province borders Cambodia and, along with adjacent Sekong province, has been the hardest hit in Laos, aid workers said.

Detailed information from the rugged region — hard to reach even in normal times — has been difficult to obtain, they said.

“Now I cannot contact Sekong branch,” the Red Cross official said, referring to his unit in the province.

He said 103 people were missing but there was no update on the number of people displaced, which on Friday he put at 37,500.

In Sekong alone about 25,000 people have lost either their homes, gardens or livestock, said Henry Braun, Laos director for the aid agency CARE, which is leading the relief effort in that province.

“Most of them have lost everything,” he said.

CARE staff reached two villages which each had only one in 25 houses still standing, Braun said.

The United Nations World Food Programme said rice and canned fish from its stockpile were distributed by the government on Friday in Sekong, where access was only possible by boat and helicopter.

Attapeu remained inaccessible, it said.

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