More than 1,000 confirmed dead in catastrophic southern Asia floods

Rescue and recovery and efforts are underway in parts of South and Southeast Asia where the number of those killed in devastating flooding continues to rise.

The extreme weather last week has killed at least 334 people in Sri Lanka, 502 in Indonesia, and 170 in Thailand, according to authorities.

Rescuers in Sri Lanka are still searching for 370 people after a cyclone hit the island nation, with downpours flooding homes, fields and roads and triggering landslides in the hilly central region.

Nearly a million people have been impacted by the heavy rains and floods, which forced nearly 200,000 into shelters, the country's disaster management centre said.

People were seen salvaging belongings from flooded homes along the banks of the Kelani river near capital Colombo on Monday.

Meanwhile, train and flight services have resumed after being disrupted last week, but schools stayed closed, officials said.

Cyclone Ditwah was the "largest and most challenging" natural disaster in Sri Lanka's history, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said.

The cyclone also brought heavy rain to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu over the weekend, with authorities saying three people were killed in rain-related incidents.

The storm, which is currently 50km (30 miles) off the coast of the state capital Chennai, has already weakened into a "deep depression" and is expected to weaken further in the next 12 hours, weather officials said on Monday.

Hundreds still missing

In Southeast Asia, close to 700 people were killed as two different cyclones hit the region. Rescuers in Indonesia are still searching for at least 508 people missing, according to official figures.

People have started clearing mud, trees and wreckage from roads on the weekend as recovery operations continued.

More than 28,000 homes have been damaged, with 1.4 million people affected by the rare tropical storm.

The country's president, Prabowo Subianto, called it a catastrophe and pledged to rebuild infrastructure as he visited the three affected provinces on Monday, where nearly 300,000 people have been displaced by the flooding.

'Nothing remains'

"The water just rose up into the house and we were afraid, so we fled. Then we came back on Friday, and the house was gone, destroyed," said Afrianti, 41, who only goes by one name and lives in West Sumatra's Padang city.

She and her family of nine have made their own tent shelter beside the single wall that remains of their home.

"My home and business are gone, the shop is gone. Nothing remains. I can only live near this one remaining wall," she said.

In Thailand, flooding in eight southern provinces affected about three million people and led to a major mobilisation of its military to evacuate critical patients from hospitals and reach people stuck in floodwaters for days.

In the worst-affected city of Hat Yai, a southern trading hub, 335 mm (13 inches) of rain fell on 21 November, its highest single-day tally in 300 years, followed by days of unrelenting downpours.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnivirakul expects residents to be able to return home within seven days, a government spokesperson said on Monday.

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The first batch of compensation payments is set to be distributed on Monday, starting with 239m baht (£5.6m) for 26,000 people, the spokesperson added.

In Malaysia there have been at least three deaths and authorities are still on alert for a second and third wave of flooding as 11,600 remain in evacuation centres.

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