MEKONG DELTA, Vietnam, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The worst floods in Vietnam's Mekong Delta for decades have spread to three more provinces in the region as the death toll from the deluge rose to at least 39, officials said on Wednesday.
Fed by the swollen Mekong River in Cambodia and fresh monsoon rains, flood levels in the worst-hit provinces of An Giang, Long An and Dong Thap bordering Cambodia rose another three to five centimetres overnight, provincial officials said.
A Vietnamese Red Cross official in An Giang said the floods had spread to several districts of the Delta provinces of Can Tho, Kien Giang and Tien Giang and also threatened areas further downstream towards the coast.
Eighteen people have now been reported killed in An Giang, 14 in Dong Thap and seven in Long An. Most of the victims were children.
All three provincial capitals are flooded and little travel by road is possible.
John Geoghegan, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Vietnam, said he expected water levels to keep rising for the rest of the month.
"And the problem is we've also had a lot of rain in the Mekong Delta, which is going to affect it a lot, and also rain in Cambodia," Geoghegan said.
PERSISTENT MONSOON RAINS
Vietnamese meteorologists have also warned that month-end high tides in the South China Sea could prevent flood waters draining out to sea from the Delta.
The floods have turned vast areas of three worst-hit Delta provinces into desolate inland seas and the IFRC and other international and local aid agencies have been assisting hundreds of thousands of affected people.
The IFRC estimates more than half a million homes have been flooded, many up to their rafters, and up to 150,000 people have been forced to flee to earthen dykes, many of which are crumbling, threatening greater casualties.
Most evacuees have had to abandon meagre possessions and rice reserves. Living conditions are cramped and squalid and the evacuees are short of food and fresh water.
Although water levels have already surpassed those of the last serious floods to hit the Delta in 1996, which killed 217, prompt rescue work by thousands of soldiers and volunteers and better flood defences have limited deaths so for this time.
In Cambodia, where floods have claimed nearly 120 lives and caused more than $50 million in damage to property alone, officials said the worst was over and waters were receding.
"The water of the Mekong River is going down and there is no sign that the water can threaten the country any more," Te Navuth, director of the hydrology department of the ministry of water resources and meteorology, told Reuters on Wednesday.
Floods hit Cambodia early this year, with water levels reaching 40-year highs in July. The floods have destroyed more than 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of crops in Cambodia.
"This year we have lost a lot of lives and property because of flooding. The first year of the new millennium has given us awful misery," said Peou Samy, secretary-general of the National Committee on Disaster Management.
Flood waters were also receding in northern and northeastern Thailand, but thousands of people have been driven by their homes, and a further death on Tuesday lifted the number killed by the Thai floods to at least 29.
"A 12-year old boy was drowned and washed away by a strong flow of flood waters in Phichit on Tuesday," said Vichai Boonmee, head of Bang Moon Nak district in Phichit province, 350 km (210 miles) north of Bangkok.
The National Rescue Centre said 61,626 residents of north and northeast Thailand had been evacuated as a result of the floods.
"Some people have been forced to leave their flooded homes and stay in temples, surviving on food that monks provide, while others sleep in tents the government provides," said an official at the rescue centre.