Kolkata, May 30 (IANS) Hundreds of villages in West Bengal continued to be marooned, with saltwater intrusion destroying crops and rendering vast stretches of land fallow in the Sundarbans area in the aftermath of Cyclone Aila as authorities upped the death count to 117 Friday.

While the government had pegged the toll at 115 Thursday, two more deaths were reported from Darjeeling overnight, state Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta told reporters. 

After a high level stock-taking meeting at the state secretariat, Dasgupta said 5.3 million people have so far been affected by Cyclone Aila, which pummeled coastal areas of the state, uprooting trees, snapping power cables and leaving a trail of destruction Monday in 13 of the 19 districts. 

Nearly 600,000 houses have been fully or partially damaged in the calamity. 

Save the Children, an NGO carrying out relief operations in the remote Sundarbans mangrove forest areas of North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas district, said hundreds of villages were still under water, with most of them inaccessible. 

"And with each passing day, the risk of a major outbreak of water-borne diseases increases," said Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children. 

"People living in these villages desperately need access to fresh drinking water as the groundwater sources are feared to be contaminated by saltwater intrusion," he added. 

Farida, a 15-year-old in Rajbati village in Sandeskhali I, said she was forced to move from a relief camp to live under the open skies as the shelter neither had water nor a toilet. 

"My house was completely destroyed. There is water everywhere. We stayed in a relief camp the first two days. But there was no water to drink and it was stinking as there was no toilet. We moved out and are now living on the street. 

"I have no fresh clothes to wear. And I don't know what happened to my friends. We went to the same learning centre in the village and I have no clue where they are now." 

The relief workers of the NGO saw villagers pulling out bodies from the debris. 

The saltwater intrusion has destroyed the paddy crop and rendered the land fallow for one or two years, while the floods washed away seeds stock, killed livestock and wiped out all stocks of freshwater fish and shrimp. 

A villager said: "It will take several years for us to recover from these losses. My children have lost all the books that we bought them. I'm not sure how they will be able to continue their education next year." 

Mamata to report to PM on post-cyclone Aila situation

Kolkata, May 31 (IANS) Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Friday said she would submit a report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the post-cyclone Aila situation in West Bengal.

"I'll meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow (Saturday) and will report to him about the post-Aila situation in West Bengal," Banerjee told a Bengali television channel, Star Ananda, over phone from the national capital. 

"I'll discuss everything with the prime minister on how the relief materials are reaching to the cyclone-hit areas. I have got reports from our zilla parishad (district council) that the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led state government is being partial and not distributing relief among people in the Sundarbans' villages. 

"There's no food and drinking water for the past three days and people are almost starving to death," Banerjee said, pointing out that Basanti, Pathapratima, Gosaba and Hingalganj are the worst-affected areas in the deltaic region. 

She said the state government has no disaster management plan to combat any natural calamity. 

"I've instructed our ministers and all party workers to reach out to cyclone affected areas tomorrow (Saturday) and help people in South 24 Parganas district who are in distress due to the devastating cyclone. A team, led by (Minister of State for Shipping) Mukul Roy, will also visit Gosaba tomorrow (Saturday) to help victims get relief from the state administration," she said. 

Army rescues 24 tourists from 15,000 feet in Sikkim

Gangtok, May 30 (IANS) In a daring rescue act that stretched on till Friday morning, Indian Army troops have evacuated all the 24 tourists, including two ailing diabetics, who were stranded at a height of 15,000 feet at Thangu in North Sikkim.

The tourists, trapped for two days following road blocks due to landslides in the tiny Himalayan state, were rescued in an operation that began Thursday night, according to Travel Agents Association of Sikkim (TAAS) president Paljor Lachungpa. 

The two aged tourists - taken ill because of the high altitude and want of insulin - were carried on stretchers across inhospitable terrain and treacherous weather Thursday night after attempts to evacuate them by a helicopter failed. 

The other 22 tourists, who had also approached the army, were Friday asked to assemble in Thangu, from where they were brought to safety. 

The tourists were returning from a trip to Gurudongmar Lake when an entire stretch of the road gave way two km below Thangu at Thamchung Wednesday. 

The situation had worsened due to several smaller landslides at four places along the route following heavy rain triggered by cyclone Aila which ravaged West Bengal earlier this week. 

NGO worries about missing children in cyclone-hit West Bengal

New Delhi, May 29 (IANS) Save the Children, an NGO, Friday said it was apprehensive about the safety of children in cyclone-hit coastal West Bengal as there were reports of many children having gone missing and it feared they could have been trafficked.

Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children, which is working in West Bengal since 1997,

said children are more vulnerable to trafficking after major disasters like floods.

Commenting on reports of missing children in the 24 Parganas area in West Bengal, he said: "This is extremely worrying as we know that children are the most vulnerable after a natural disaster. After the Bihar floods in 2008, the number of children trafficked increased sharply." 

He recounted that a 15-year-old girl, Farida, from Sandekshali in the Sundarbans reported that she couldn't find any of her friends with whom she had gone to a learning centre with. 

He said as Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas is endemic to trafficking, they had set up community-based protection mechanisms to ensure that children in this block are safe. "The agency has helped to rescue and rehabilitate around 2,000 children so far. Sadly, the entire infrastructure set up by Save the Children has been destroyed," he added.

The NGO also appealed to people to contribute to help the people of the state in the wake of the devastation wrought by Cyclone Aila. "Save the Children is appealing for public support as it launches its relief operation to assist thousands of families who have lost their homes and livelihoods in Cyclone Aila which battered West Bengal," Chandy said.

Save the Children works in 11 states and union territories for the rights of the children. 

He said North and South 24 Parganas were two of the worst hit districts with "more than a hundred villages still under water." 

"Most of these villages are now inaccessible and with each passing day, the risk of a major outbreak of water-borne diseases increases," said Chandy. 

IANS