At least 600 people are dead, with hundreds more missing, as parts of Southeast Asia—including Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka—were ravaged by massive flooding from Cyclone Ditwah. Rescuers have been struggling to reach the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where the storm first struck on Wednesday, and where at least 350 have died with 279 more individuals missing. “The death toll is believed to be increasing, since many bodies are still missing, while many have not been reached,” Suharyanto, the head of Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), told Al Jazeera on Saturday. Approximately 80,000 people have been evacuated from the island, with hundreds still missing. Sri Lanka has also been severely affected. “Most deaths in the [Badulla] district were due to landslides, people buried under houses,” said L.U. Kumara, director of the disaster management body in Badulla, the country’s capital city, according to The New York Times. Thousands are still stranded across the countries, with many on rooftops. One woman from Thailand, Amphorn Kaeophengkro, said she and several family members stood atop a table, a window frame and a washing machine for two days to survive the flooding. “We weren’t thinking about anything else except surviving,” she told Reuters.
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