PATNA, India, July 26 (AFP) - Relief workers have found 143 bodies as waters receded in the flood-ravaged eastern Indian state of Bihar, an official said here Monday.
Government officials in the state capital of Patna said 109 bodies were retrieved so far from the worst-hit district of Darbhanga and 34 more from Madhubani district in the past two days.
"The details came in only after the waters began receding and our communication systems were restored," said Upendra Sharma, spokesman of the state's disaster management department.
"Most of the recoveries were made from the remotest of remote areas," the spokesman told reporters in Patna.
Sharma also said a total of 91 casualties have been reported over the past month from the inundated district of Samastipur.
The announcement took to 452 the number of flood-related deaths in 19 of Bihar's 38 districts which suffered the brunt of monsoon floods since mid-June.
Some 7,222 villages and around 4,8 million hectares (11.86 million acres) have been hit by the floods, Sharma said.
"A fourth of Bihar's 80 million people are affected by the floods," he said, adding that they were now calculating how many people had been displaced by the now-receding waters.