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.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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