Race to get aid to Asia flood survivors as toll tops 1,200

Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka on Tuesday worked to rush aid to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed over 1,200 people in four countries.

Torrential monsoon season deluges paired with two separate tropical cyclones last week dumped heavy rain across Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia's Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia.

Climate change is producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms.

The floodwaters have now largely receded, but the devastation means hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters and struggling to secure clean water and food.

On Monday, Indonesia's government said it was sending 34,000 tonnes of rice and 6.8 million liters of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.

"There can be no delays," Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.

Aid groups said they were working to ship supplies to affected areas, warning that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled already.

A shipment of 12 tonnes of food from the group aboard an Indonesian navy vessel was due to arrive in Aceh on Tuesday.

At least 659 people were killed in the floods across Sumatra, and 475 are still listed as missing. A million people have evacuated from their homes, according to the disaster agency.

Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.

The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.

Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.

A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 410 people.

Another 336 remain missing, and an official in the central town of Welimada told local reporters he expected the toll to rise, as his staff dug through the mud looking for victims buried by landslides.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the "most challenging natural disaster in our history".

Unlike his Indonesian counterpart, he has called for international aid.

Sri Lanka's air force, backed by counterparts from India and Pakistan, has been evacuating stranded residents and delivering food and other supplies.

In the capital Colombo meanwhile, floodwaters were slowly subsiding on Tuesday.

The speed with which waters rose around the city surprised local residents used to seasonal flooding.

Rains have eased across the country, but landslide alerts remain in force across most of the hardest-hit central region, officials said.