Authorities warned residents to remain at home yesterday after heavy rains began falling again across Mumbai and the surrounding state, which were hammered last week by devastating floods.
Cleanup efforts and the distribution of food supplies to needy residents were badly slowed by the renewed monsoon rains, which began early yesterday morning, and aviation officials ordered the city's airports, the busiest in the country, closed because of poor visibility. The airports reopened at around noon after a seven-hour shutdown.
Officials, meanwhile, said the death toll from the recent rains could reach 1,000.
The recovery over the weekend of more than 100 bodies pushed the official death toll to 899. Yesterday, officials said more bodies were likely to be recovered from the flood-devastated Raigad district.
"The bodies are still coming out. There will be another 100 or so," said K. Vatsa, state rehabilitation secretary. "The toll will definitely be around 1,000."
With renewed rains pounding the city, the Mumbai police issued an alert cautioning people to stay home because of rising water levels.
"We're asking people to travel only if essential," said Mumbai's police chief A.N. Roy.
Five days after crippling rains pounded western India -- reaching a record 94cm in suburban Mumbai -- soldiers, civil defense teams and aid workers continued to find bodies from the state's worst-affected districts: Raigad, Ratnagiri, Thane, Parbhani, Nanded and Kolhapur.
But incessant rainfall and mounds of debris, boulders and mud tangled into the wooden and tin remains of people's homes were making it a challenge to pull out the remaining bodies.
"The rains are making retrieval difficult," Vatsa said.
Nearly 200 medical teams from Mumbai have set out for more than 300 villages across the state. Civic authorities have deployed health workers in the Mumbai suburbs to distribute medicines and disinfectants to guard against the spread of waterborne diseases.
As many as 418 people were killed in Mumbai -- most of them drowned, buried by landslides or electrocuted.
Government and relief officials say there is little likelihood of finding more survivors.
Yesterday, electricity was gradually restored to many northern Mumbai neighborhoods a day after angry demonstrators blocked traffic demanding restoration of clean drinking water, power and the cleanup of garbage and decomposing animal carcasses.
Residents in five Mumbai neighborhoods shouted anti-government slogans and demanded an immediate cleanup. Some shielded themselves from the rain with plastic sheets, while others simply got drenched as they demonstrated outside civic offices.
"For so many days we have been lifting the bodies of the dead and now we are clearing animals from the roads. Is this our work?" asked a furious Hafeez Irani, his face covered with a handkerchief against the stench.
FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: The UK would continue to reinforce ties with Taiwan ‘in a wide range of areas’ as a part of a ‘strong unofficial relationship,’ a paper said The UK plans to conduct more freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs David Lammy told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. British Member of Parliament Desmond Swayne said that the Royal Navy’s HMS Spey had passed through the Taiwan Strait “in pursuit of vital international freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.” Swayne asked Lammy whether he agreed that it was “proper and lawful” to do so, and if the UK would continue to carry out similar operations. Lammy replied “yes” to both questions. The
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS