COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's disaster management centre on Thursday said more than one million people had been forced out of their homes by flooding over the last week.

"Some 533,000 people have been displaced in Batticaloa district alone where we have set up 225 camps to accommodate them," a spokesman for the centre said, adding that a total of 1,066,000 people have been displaced.

More than 250,000 people have taken shelter in state-run relief camps while the other displaced people have moved to higher ground, he said.