The authorities in Nepal say two hundred and fifty people have been killed since June in the worst floods and landslides for five years.

Most of the deaths have resulted from landslides in remote hill areas.

Floods in southern districts have destroyed forty thousand hectares of farmland.

A spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry said that there could be a shortfall of more than two per cent in foodgrain production this year.

Across the Indian border in Uttar Pradesh more than thirteen hundred people are believed to have died in the current floods.

In Assam, in north-east India, at least thirty-five people are missing after a rescue boat capsized on the swollen Brahmaputra river, which has reached its highest level for more than thirty years.