Monsoon rain exacerbated by tropical storms caused some of the region's worst flooding in years, with millions affected in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. BBC reported.
Intense rainfall began on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday. "During the flood, everything was gone," a resident of Bireuen in Sumatra's Aceh province told Reuters news agency. "I wanted to save my clothes, but my house came down."
With hundreds still missing, the death toll is likely to rise. Thousands remain stranded, some awaiting rescue on rooftops.
As of Saturday more than 300 people had died in Indonesia and 160 in Thailand. There were also several deaths reported in Malaysia.
In Sri Lanka, which has been battered by Cyclone Ditwah, more than 130 people are dead and some 170 missing, officials said.
An exceptionally rare tropical cyclone, named Cyclone Senyar, caused catastrophic landslides and flooding in Indonesia, with homes swept away and thousands of buildings submerged.
Indonesia's disaster agency said on Saturday that nearly 300 people were still missing after flooding devastated Sumatra.
"The current was very fast, in a matter of seconds it reached the streets, entered the houses," a resident in Aceh Province, Arini Amalia, told the BBC.
She and her grandmother raced to a relative's house on higher terrain. On returning the following day to retrieve some belongings, she said the flood had completely swallowed the house: "It's already sunk."
After waters rapidly rose in West Sumatra and submerged his home, Meri Osman said he was "swept away by the current" and clung onto a clothesline until he was rescued.
The bad weather has hampered rescue operations, and while tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, hundreds are still stranded, the Indonesian disaster agency said.
