Myanmar rescuers fear 10 dead in cut-off flood zone

Rescuers were battling on Monday to access areas of southern Myanmar where they fear floods may have killed up to 10 people and left 30 missing, an aid group chairman told AFP.

Myanmar's southernmost Tanintharyi region has been hit by heavy rains since Friday night, part of an intense weather system also hitting neighbouring Thailand and flooding Bangkok over the weekend.

Myo Min, chairman of the volunteer Dawei Zabuthiri Emergency Medical Service, told AFP several townships in Tanintharyi were badly affected by flooding and landslides.

Some villages had become only accessible by foot, and aid teams have found hundreds of residents displaced from their homes to monastery shelters, he said.

There are "no confirmed figures" of casualties yet, but preliminary information suggests a death toll between seven and 10 people, with 20 to 30 missing, he added.

"Rescue workers have not yet been able to fully manage the entire disaster area," he told AFP by telephone.

Authorities have not yet released any official toll in a country whose civil war complicates aid efforts.

The conflict often makes even the scale of natural disasters hard for humanitarian organisations to judge.

Myanmar, a nation of 51 million people, ranks among the 10 nations most vulnerable to climate change, according to non-profit Germanwatch.

It has also suffered from dramatic aid cutbacks following US President Donald Trump's decision to slash Washington's humanitarian budget.

In Thailand, the capital Bangkok declared a flood disaster over the weekend after almost 48 hours of heavy rain left homes, shops and roads waterlogged.

Nearly 4,900 people were evacuated to shelters, with around 52,000 households affected, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.