Dozens of villages in Aurai and Katra blocks of Muzaffarpur district were also flooded after the Bagmati breached its embankment at three places Saturday. It was reported that several villages in Darbhanga district were also flooded.

Major rivers in north Bihar, especially the Kosi, Gandak, Budhi and Bagmati are in spate following heavy rains in their catchment areas. With heavy rainfall recorded in the catchments areas in neighbouring Nepal, the water levels of these rivers have been rising to dangerous levels for the last four to five days.

'The Bagmati has crossed the danger mark at some points and the water level in Gandak also increased following water discharge into the river from Nepal,' an official of the central water commission said.

In view of the rising water level in major rivers, the state government has alerted the administrations of flood-prone districts. The engineers of the water resources department have been directed to keep a vigil on vulnerable embankments.

The fear of a repeat of last year's devastating floods is haunting thousands of people in the region through which the Kosi river flows. More than three million people were rendered homeless when the river breached its bank upstream in Nepal and changed course August 2008, flooding large tracts of land.