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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of