A thousand villages in India’s Punjab state are marooned by deadly floods, with thousands forced to seek shelter in relief camps, government authorities say.

Flooding across the northwestern state killed at least 29 people and affected over 250,000 last month, with the state’s chief minister calling it “one of the worst flood disasters in decades”.

The region is often dubbed India’s breadbasket, but more than 940 square kilometres (360 square miles) of farmland are flooded, leading to “devastating crop losses”, Punjab’s Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi on Monday assured him of the federal government’s “full support”.

Authorities have said they fear a “huge loss of livestock”, the full extent of which will only be clear when the waters

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