Colombo (ANTARA News/AFP) - Sri Lanka`s monsoon rains spread to more villages and towns on Sunday, leaving at least 14 people dead and more than one million with flooded homes, officials said.

The number of people in state-run shelters rose to 236,000 by Saturday evening, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) in Colombo said, adding that 1,053,000 people had had their homes inundated.

Most of the flood victims had moved in with friends and relatives living on higher ground, officials said.

Police figures showed that at least 14 people had been killed in flood-related incidents in the past week.

The DMC said that roads and fields were submerged across the east, centre and north of the island -- areas which had already been badly hit by an earlier wave of monsoon rains last month.

Then, 43 people were killed and the number of people driven from their homes also passed one million.

The latest flooding came after the United Nations issued an appeal for 51 million dollars in emergency aid to help people affected by last month`s floods.(*)

Editor: Ruslan Burhani
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