Indian monsoon death toll climbs to 124 as search for missing continues

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Indian monsoon death toll climbs to 124 as search for missing continues

July 25, 2021: The death toll from floods and landslides triggered by Indian monsoon rains on Sunday rose to 124, with rescue workers searching for more missing people, officials said.

Heavy rains have lashed the west coast of India since Thursday, with the Indian Meteorological Department warning of more rains in the next few days. In the Indian state of Maharashtra, a massive landslide on the hillside of Talia village, south of Mumbai, on Thursday killed 114 people, including more than 40 people.

Local residents said it had flattened dozens of homes in just a few minutes, leaving only two concrete structures standing and cutting off power. Rescuers were crushing mud and debris for 99 others.

“My entire team is now engaged in relief work,” India’s National Disaster Response Force inspector Rajesh Yawal, who was involved in relief work in the village, told AFP on Saturday. “A lot of bodies were washed away, some were found floating among the trees,” he said.

Two separate landslides south of Indian capital Mumbai also killed a dozen others. In parts of Chiplun, roads and houses were flooded after 24 hours of uninterrupted rain, with the water level rising to 20 feet  on Thursday.

According to reports, eight patients also died at a local Covid19 hospital after power supply to ventilators was cut off due to the floods. In neighboring Goa, a woman drowned, the state government told the Press Trust of India, in which Chief Minister Promod Sawant described it as “the worst flooding since 1982”.

In Indian coastal plains across Maharashtra and Goa, floodwaters rose after river eruptions. Frightened residents climbed onto rooftops and upstairs to escape the swelling. Further south in the state of Karnataka, the death toll rose to three to nine overnight, with four others still missing, officials said.

Electricity supply has been disrupted in 11 affected districts of India, officials said, adding that crops have been damaged on many lands. Four people were killed when a building collapsed in Indian capital Mumbai’s slum just before dawn on Friday, officials said.

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