Floods claim five lives in Vietnam

PHNOM PENH: Elderly residents and small children clung to inflatable tyres as soldiers and police used rope lines to get them to safety from rising floodwater on Saturday in Cambodia’s western province of Battambang.

Hundreds of families in three Cambodian provinces -- Pursat, Battambang and Pailin -- have been forced to evacuate amid extreme rainfall ahead of the arrival of a tropical depression across the Mekong region.

"A two-year-old child and 57-year-old man have drowned in the flood," Seak Vichet, a spokesman for the Cambodian national committee for disaster management told AFP on Saturday.

Authorities do not yet have a clear picture of the extent of the damage or people affected but expect the situation to worsen on Sunday. In central Vietnam almost a metre of rain has fallen in recent days.