Deadly flooding displaces thousands across Mekong region

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. “A two-year-old child and 57-year-old man have drowned in the flood,” Seak Vichet, a spokesman for the Cambodian national committee for disaster management told the AFP news agency late on Saturday. Authorities do not yet have a clear picture of the extent of the damage or people affected but expect the situation to get worse. style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0; bottom: 0; right: 0; left: 0;">