• Indonesian president under pressure to declare national emergency
• Jakarta sends three warships carrying aid, two hospital ships to some worst-hit areas
• Some shops, offices reopen in Sri Lanka’s Colombo
• Public criticism of govt response grows in Thailand

PADANG: The toll in deadly flooding and landslides across parts of Asia climbed past 1,100 on Monday as hardest-hit Sri Lanka and Indonesia deployed military personnel to help survivors.

Separate weather systems brought torrential, extended rainfall to the entire island of Sri Lanka and large parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand and northern Malaysia last week.

Much of the region is currently in its monsoon season but climate change is producing more extreme rain events and turbocharging storms.

The relentless rains left residents clinging to rooftops awaiting rescue by boat or helicopter, and cut entire villages off from assistance.

Arriving in North Sumatra on Monday, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said “the worst has passed, hopefully”.

The government’s “priority now is how to immediately send the necessary aid”, with particular focus on several cut-off areas, he added.

Under pressure

Prabowo is under increasing pressure to declare a national emergency in response to flooding and landslides that have killed at least 593 people, with nearly 470 still missing.

Unlike his Sri Lankan counterpart, Prabowo has avoided publicly calling for international assistance.

The toll is the deadliest in a natural disaster in Indonesia since a massive 2018 earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed more than 2,000 people in Sulawesi.

The government has sent three warships carrying aid and two hospital ships to some of the worst-hit areas, where many roads remain impassable.

‘Everything went under’

In Sri Lanka, the government called for international aid and used military helicopters to reach people stranded by flooding and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah.

At least 355 people have been killed, Sri Lankan officials said on Monday, with another 366 still missing.

Floodwaters in the capital Colombo peaked overnight.Now that the rain has stopped, there were hopes that waters would begin receding. Some shops and offices have reopened.

The floodwaters came as a surprise to some around Colombo.“Every year we experience minor floods, but this is something else,” delivery driver Dinusha Sanjaya, 37, told AFP.“It is not just the amount of water, but how quickly everything went under.”

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who declared a state of emergency to deal with the disaster, called the flooding the “largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history”.

Military helicopters have been deployed to airlift stranded residents and to deliver food. One crashed just north of Colombo on Sunday, killing the pilot.

The annual monsoon season often brings heavy rain, triggering landslides and flash floods.

But the flooding that hit Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia was also exacerbated by a rare tropical storm that dumped heavy rain on Sumatra island in particular.

Anger in Thailand

The waves of rain caused flooding that killed at least 176 people in southern Thailand, authorities said Monday, one of the deadliest flood incidents in the country in a decade.

The government has rolled out relief measures, but there has been growing public criticism of the flood response, and two local officials have been suspended over their alleged failures.

Across the border in Malaysia, where heavy rains also inundated large stretches of land in Perlis state, two people were killed.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2025