In Indonesia, at least 908 people were confirmed dead and 410 were still missing, according to the latest data on Saturday from the island of Sumatra in Aceh province, where more than 800,000 people have also been displaced.
In Sri Lanka, the government has confirmed 607 deaths, with another 214 people missing and feared dead, in what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has called the country’s most challenging natural disaster.
The floods also caused at least 276 deaths in Thailand, while two people were killed in Malaysia and two people died in Vietnam after heavy rains triggered more than a dozen landslides, according to state media.
On Indonesia’s Sumatra, many survivors were still struggling to recover from the flash floods and landslides that hit last week as Indonesia’s meteorological agency warned Aceh could see “very heavy rain” through Saturday, with North and West Sumatra also at risk.
Aceh Governor Muzakir Manaf said response teams were still searching for bodies in “waist-deep” mud.
However, starvation was one of the gravest threats now hanging over remote and inaccessible villages, he added.
“Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh,” he told reporters.
“People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That’s how it is.”
Entire villages had been washed away in the rainforest-cloaked Aceh Tamiang region, Muzakir said.
“The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea. Many villages and sub-districts are now just names,” he added.
In Sri Lanka, where more than two million people – nearly 10 percent of the population- have been affected, officials warned on Friday of continuing heavy rains causing new landslide risks.
Sri Lanka’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said more than 71,000 homes were damaged, including nearly 5,000 that were destroyed by last week’s floods and landslides.
The DMC said on Friday that more rain was expected in many parts of the country, including the worst-affected central region, triggering fears of more landslides, hampering cleanup operations.