The BBC reports that heavy rain has submerged thousands of villages in India’s Assam State. 50 people have lost their lives in heavy monsoon flooding, and over two million others have been affected.

Nearly 100 boats across the state have been deployed in the past few days, with hundreds of relief camps having been set up to shelter the displaced.

A video of minister Mrinal Saikal wading into murky waters to rescue people has highlighted the plight of those hit by the floods. Another video shows him saving goats. Saikal tweeted “Flood is creating havoc in my constituency. We have been rescuing stranded people from interior places.”

While a heavy monsoon is an annual occurrence in Assam, where a third of the population is Muslim, the BBC reports that last year when India’s controversial citizenship act was made law, Assam residents struggled to prove their Indian citizenship because their documents had either been destroyed or their families were displaced, in flooding and landslides.

Meanwhile, at least 51 wild animals have died at the Kaziranga National Park, which had become submerged. The park is a Unesco World Heritage site. Tigers and rhinos fled to nearby villages to avoid the flooding. Officials said they had rescued 102 animals.

Umm Muhammed Umar