Bhopal, Aug 24 (IANS): Over 4,000 people stranded due to flood caused by excessive rainfall in Madhya Pradesh have been moved to safer places, officials said on Tuesday, adding several rivers in the state such as rivers such as Narmada, Betwa, Son, Tapti and others were in spate.

Houses were damaged and crops destroyed due to the flood while there have been reports of at least five deaths in the last 24 hours.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has requested the Central government to provide aircraft to reach out to the flood-hit people.

The state has received heavy rainfall in the last two days due to which roads, fields, grounds were submerged and some bridges to connect roads were washed away.

The rescue operation in many locations were still underway as people in around 25 villages in three districts -- Vidisha, Guna and Rajgarh, have been stranded following rains on Sunday and Monday.

By Tuesday afternoon, two IAF MI-17 V5 Helicopters from Nagpur arrived in Bhopal.

Chief Minister Chouhan has also conducted an aerial survey and visited several flooded areas in Vidisha, Guna, Sagar, Rajgarh and Bhopal.

As per the official reports, 2,446 people were rescued and over 4,000 people shifted to safer places. The rescue work was carried out by the National Disaster Relief Force and State Disaster Relief Force with the help of boats and two IAF helicopters.

"Crops are destroyed, roads and bridges submerged in water, power stations are flooded with water... Our first priority is to save the lives of people. Power supply was disrupted due to flood at power stations. In some places including in Bhopal, power supply has been affected," the Chief Minister said.

Bhopal airport recorded 372.9 mm of rain in 48 hours (till 8.30 a.m. on Tuesday) while the city recorded 312.1 mm rain in the same time period.

During intervening night of August 13 and 14 in the year 2006, Bhopal airport had recorded 292 mm of rain in 12 hours, while the city had recorded 321 mm, causing flood and killing 11 people.