Heavy rain again flooded Mumbai yesterday after a record downpour last week triggered floods and landslides that killed nearly 1,000 people in and around India's financial capital.
Floods closed key roads and delayed train services in the sprawling metropolis of more than 15 million people, but there were no reports of new casualties or serious damage.
"The speed of the relief operations has come down, but we have deployed personnel and equipment and we are working round the clock," said Suresh Kakine, director of relief for the western state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital.
He said 600 medical teams had been dispatched around the state to help treat the injured and cremate the dead. Disease remains a serious threat as dead bodies and animal carcasses are still strewn around the city due to last week's floods, while clean water was scarce in parts as burst sewage pipes polluted supplies.
Financial markets were open and operating normally while schools were shut.
The city's police chief appealed to residents to stay indoors as the Mumbai Meteorological Department forecast "heavy to very rainfall accompanied by strong gusty winds" over the next 24 hours in Maharashtra state.
One official said nearly 21cm of rain fell between Sunday and yesterday morning at Santacruz, the suburb that recorded an unprecedented 94cm last Tuesday.
Smita Gaikwad, who works at a back-office services firm, said she had to move in to her brother's 10th floor apartment because her ground-floor apartment was under 0.6m of water.
"The slums nearby are washed away," she said. "Dead buffaloes are floating on water. We didn't have power for 72 hours."
"Everybody is in a state of numbness," she said.
Before a renewed downpour on Sunday, there were angry protests in the parts of the city where people have been without electricity and water since flooding started last Tuesday.
Film-makers in the city, home to India's prolific movie industry, have started legal action against the state government over its handling of the floods, newspapers reported.
Weather officials believe the heavy rain could spread to Gujarat state to the north, already hit by floods last month that killed over 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Officials said 924 people had died in Maharashtra -- 425 in Mumbai alone -- due to landslides, drowning and electrocution in flooded streets.
The weather office says the rains are the worst to lash the city since officials began keeping records 120 years ago.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion