Lucnow, Aug. 4(AP): Helicopters dropped food to almost two million hungry and frightened villagers perched on rooftops in India on Saturday, as torrents of water from monsoon rains pushed the death toll in India and neighboring Bangladesh to more than 200, officials said.

Vital to farmers, the annual rains are a blessing and a curse for the subcontinent _ a fact highlighted by official tallies. At least 202 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's always dangerous _ last year more than 1,000 people died, most from drowning, landslides or house collapses.

This year, estimates of total deaths vary wildly from a few hundred to well over a thousand.

On Saturday, the water level of flooded rivers started receding in India's northeastern Assam state. But there was no such respite in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states.

Across India's northern Uttar Pradesh state on Friday and Saturday, two villagers were killed when a house collapsed, two children were swept away by flood waters, and one person was killed by a snake bite, said Surender Shrivastav, a state government official.

Helicopters dropped food to nearly two million people in 2,200 villages cut off by flood waters in the worst-hit eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, said Umesh Sinha, the state relief commissioner. He said that nearly 279,223 acres (113,000 hectares) of paddy rice crops had been destroyed.

On Friday, six people drowned in northeastern Assam state where one-horned rhinos straying from their habitat, the Kaziranga National Park, killed one person and injured two others, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

Jehir Ali, 28, was riding a bicycle near village Gendheli, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Gauhati, Assam state's capital, when a rhino charged at him, said Dhiren Gogoi, a wildlife official.

``Ali fell down and was badly mauled by the adult rhino. He was shifted to a hospital where he died,'' Gogoi told The Associated Press.

Several rhinos have moved out of the 430 square kilometer (166 sq. mile) Kaziranga National Park, 70 per cent of which has been flooded by the Brahmaputra River.

``Two rhinos have entered villages in the area resulting in panic among the population. Two people injured by the animals have been admitted to hospital,'' Diganta Barbaruah, another wildlife official, said on Saturday.

Also Friday, a flood-swollen river swept away four people in Begusarai district of eastern Bihar state where nearly one million people have moved to national highways and higher river embankments from their flooded homes, said a statement by the state's disaster management office.

With hundreds of villages submerged across the fertile plains that stretch along the southern edge of the Himalayas, people were taking refuge wherever they could _ in Uttar Pradesh state, in northern India, women and children were spotted screaming for help from treetops.

In parts of the state river levels rose so quickly that villagers had no time to save any belongings.

``The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react,'' Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV.

Health workers were fanning out across parts of Bangladesh and India to try to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.

In northwestern Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2,000 people who fled their flooded village for higher ground in the Sirajganj district.

``The floods have taken away all I had,'' said the 40-year-old Sheikh. ``Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive.''

One woman in Uttar Pradesh who identified herself only as Savitra said she had not ``eaten anything for the last two days.''

So far this year, some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 148 people have died in recent days because of the floods in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.

India's Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains.