Pakistani rescue workers struggled on Wednesday to reach villagers, some stranded in trees, after a cyclone hit the coast, while in India, snakes and scorpions hampered efforts to help storm victims.
Early rainy season storms in South Asia have killed nearly 400 people since late last week and more bad weather for at least parts of the region was on the way, weather officials said. More than 250,000 people in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan were affected by a cyclone that hit on Tuesday, killing at least 17 people, a disaster management official said.
"The situation is out of our hands, it's out of control. The entire town has been inundated and people have taken refuge in tall buildings and trees," Rauf Rind, the mayor of the town of Kach, told Reuters by telephone.
The Kach district, near the Iranian border, was also in danger from an overflowing dam. The water level at the Mirani dam had reached a critical point and was rising, and about 10,000 people were in danger, officials said.
Stretches of road and several bridges along the coast have been swept away while communications with worst-hit areas are patchy and much of the coast is without power. Many mud houses had collapsed, officials said.
The head of a provincial disaster management authority, Khuda Bakhsh Baluch, cited estimates of more than 250,000 people affected. Three districts had been inundated and tens of thousands of people were stranded, he said.
'Cut off from the world'
"The three districts are totally cut off from the world. At the moment, they're not getting any relief goods because even helicopters can't fly due to bad weather," Baluch said.
Scattered rain was expected until Thursday.
Tropical cyclone Yemyin hit Baluchistan three days after another storm struck Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, killing about 230 people, many when fierce wind brought down slum houses.
Karachi was spared the full force of the cyclone but nevertheless five people were killed, an ambulance service official said.
Power was restored to most of Karachi by Wednesday but up to 10 percent of the city was still without electricity, a power corporation official said.
The navy rescued 146 fishermen, including seven whose boat sank, but there was no information on the crew of another boat that sank, navy spokesman Captain Siddiq Akbar said.
A ship had been sent to rescue the crew of a foreign merchant vessel, he said.
Flooding, snakes, scorpions in India
In neighboring India, authorities have been evacuating tens of thousands of people threatened by flooding as the toll from havoc wrecked by the arrival of the rainy season topped 150.
Thousands of villages have been left without basic services in the worst-hit southern state, Andhra Pradesh, and some villagers were stranded on rooftops for a fifth day.
The town of Kurnool, 130 miles southwest of the state capital, Hyderabad, was badly hit by flooding.
"Rain water has entered into protected drinking water systems in over 500 villages and four towns," said district chief M. Danakishore.
Snakes and scorpions were hindering efforts by soldiers trying to clear debris from 745 miles of roads and plugging breaches in 120 reservoirs, authorities said.
Indian weather officials forecast heavy rain on the east coast, with a storm in the Bay of Bengal due to hit Andhra Pradesh and Orissa state in the next 48 hours.
Fishermen have been advised not to go to sea and danger signs have been raised at ports.