Three days of heavy rain and flash floods has left 41 people dead and forced more than 55,000 from their homes in India's southern Andhra Pradesh state, officials said yesterday, sparking a major relief operation.
"We have opened up 95 relief camps ... for 56,000 displaced people and also brought in 200 medical teams to contain the spread of water-related diseases," said Preeti Sudan, the state's disaster management commissioner.
At least 45 people were reported dead and officials said many others, including fishermen out at sea, were missing after the tropical storm hit coastal regions of the state on Friday.
Coastguard boats were looking for the missing fishermen, who went to sea despite weather warnings, and were distributing food, fresh water and medicine to a huge rural population, some stranded on the roofs of houses and vehicles or up trees.
"I spent the night on my rooftop along with my family after flood water gushed into my house," said Musari Venkateswarlu, a school teacher in Guntur's Macherla town.
State officials said late on Friday that the flooding had disrupted road, rail and air traffic across the state, as well as causing power and telecom failures.
A disaster management official said the southeastern coastal state was concerned about the situation in the Kurnool district -- 225km southwest of Hyderabad -- where the Kundu River has overflowed and marooned Nandyal, a town of approximately 150,000 people.
Hundreds of trees were uprooted, electric poles felled and highways flooded as low-lying villages and small towns in Kurnool and Guntur took the full force of the storm.
The dead included 15 people swept away by a flash flood near a bridge construction site in Kurnool.
Rains had weakened but were expected to continue through yesterday. Incessant rains since Thursday night had dumped almost 200 millimetres.
About a dozen people have been killed by lightning strikes during the storm.
Hundreds of people die every year in India because of extreme weather, including monsoons, with more than 100 people perishing in a heat wave across northern India earlier this month.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is leaning into his banking background as his country fights a trade war with the US, but his financial ties have also made him a target for conspiracy theories. Incorporating tropes familiar to followers of the far-right QAnon movement, conspiratorial social media posts about the Liberal leader have surged ahead of the country’s April 28 election. Posts range from false claims he recited a “satanic chant” at a campaign event to artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images of him in a pool with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “He’s the ideal person to be targeted here, for sure, due to
DISPUTE: Beijing seeks global support against Trump’s tariffs, but many governments remain hesitant to align, including India, ASEAN countries and Australia China is reaching out to other nations as the US layers on more tariffs, in what appears to be an attempt by Beijing to form a united front to compel Washington to retreat. Days into the effort, it is meeting only partial success from countries unwilling to ally with the main target of US President Donald Trump’s trade war. Facing the cratering of global markets, Trump on Wednesday backed off his tariffs on most nations for 90 days, saying countries were lining up to negotiate more favorable conditions. China has refused to seek talks, saying the US was insincere and that it
RSS