(MENAFN) Southeast Asia confronts a catastrophic humanitarian crisis as flooding and landslides across Indonesia's Sumatra island have claimed over 900 lives, with authorities warning that hunger may drive fatalities even higher.

Indonesia's disaster management agency confirmed the grim figures Saturday following relentless tropical storms and monsoon deluges that have battered the region from Sumatran jungles to Sri Lankan tea estates.

The weeklong disaster sequence has killed more than 1,790 people across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, with natural catastrophes overwhelming emergency response capabilities.

Across Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, torrential flooding has obliterated infrastructure, buried homes under thick sediment, and severed critical supply lines to isolated communities.

Aceh governor Muzakir Manaf reported rescue operations continuing through "waist-deep" mud as teams recover victims.

Yet starvation now poses the most dire threat to survivors trapped in unreachable settlements.

"Many people need basic necessities. Many areas remain untouched in the remote areas of Aceh," he told reporters.

"People are not dying from the flood, but from starvation. That's how it is."

Complete villages have vanished beneath the deluge in rainforest-covered Aceh Tamiang, Muzakir confirmed.

"The Aceh Tamiang region is completely destroyed, from the top to the bottom, down to the roads and down to the sea.

"Many villages and sub-districts are now just names," he said.

Flood survivor Fachrul Rozi from Aceh Tamiang described sheltering for seven days inside a cramped former shop with fellow evacuees.

"We ate whatever was available, helping each other with the little supplies each resident had brought," he told AFP.

"We slept crammed together."

Aceh resident Munawar Liza Zainal expressed feeling "betrayed" by Indonesia's government, which continues resisting calls for a national emergency declaration.

"This is an extraordinary disaster that must be faced with extraordinary measures," he told AFP, reflecting widespread anger among displaced survivors.

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