Indian monsoon deaths near 900
2005-07-29 09:28
Mumbai - Deaths from India's record monsoon climbed to near 900 on Friday as rescuers unearthed more bodies from landslides and residents of a Mumbai shantytown stampeded on rumours of storm-created tsunamis, police said.
"We are now confirming that the number of dead in Mumbai is 370," said A N Roy, police chief of the western commercial hub.
The figure included 18 killed in the overnight stampede, 74 bodies dug out by rescuers from a landslide that engulfed houses in Mumbai's Sakinaka area and five other flood-linked deaths, Roy said, updating earlier tolls.
At least 513 people have been killed elsewhere in Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, according to B M Kulkarni, of the state police, taking the total number of confirmed deaths to 883.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Amitabh Gupta said more than 50 people were injured in the stampede, which followed false reports that a wall of water was about to swamp the area - variously from a burst dam or a tsunami.
More rain
Weather officials forecast more heavy rain for the city of 15 million, which has been brought to a near-standstill with schools, banks and stock markets closed and public transport barely operating.
Hospital officials said 11 of the 16 dead in the stampede were women and included a three-year-old girl.
More than 300 relatives of the dead and injured gathered outside a local hospital waiting to hear from the doctors.
Ambulances were still ferrying the injured while police threw a ring around the hospital entrance to enable quick passage for the injured.
Chandrasekhar Prajapati, another survivor of the stampede, said he heard shouts of "run, run water is coming."
"It has been raining heavily for the last couple of days. So everybody believed it," he said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who Thursday toured the rain-ravaged areas in a helicopter, said he was "deeply pained by this human tragedy" and announced emergency aid totalling seven billion rupees ($162m) for the Maharashtra state government.
B M Kulkarni, of Maharashtra police, said before the reports of the stampede that 273 people had died in Mumbai and at least 513 in other parts of the state.
He said the death toll rose sharply after more than 160 deaths by drowning were reported in Mumbai.
Aerial pictures of Mumbai showed much of the city marooned in debris-laden water. Long queues of vehicles were stranded on highways.
Heavy casualties occurred in a remote village of the rain-lashed state, where at least 100 people from 20 families were feared killed by a landslide, the domestic Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said.
Authorities were air-dropping food and water to stranded residents of Mumbai and Raighad, the Hindi news channel Aaj Tak said.
The city's weather bureau said Mumbai received 944.2m of rainfall in a 24-hour period ending mid-morning on Wednesday, the most rainfall ever recorded in a single day in India.