the death toll rises to 124 dead, dozens of missing people wanted

The toll of floods and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains in India rose to 124 dead on Sunday, authorities said, with rescuers still looking for dozens of the missing.

The west coast of the country has been inundated by torrential rains since Thursday, and Indian weather services have warned of more downpours in the coming days. In Maharasthra state, 114 people were killed, including more than 40 in a landslide that struck the village of Taliye on Thursday, south of Mumbai, the country’s main financial center.

“Many people were washed away as they tried to flee” when the landslide occurred, a villager, Jayram Mahaske, whose relatives remained stranded, told AFP.

Dozens of houses demolished

The landslide knocked down dozens of homes within minutes, leaving only two concrete structures standing and cutting off the power supply, residents said. Rescuers searched the mud and debris for 99 other people still missing.

“My whole team is engaged in the rescue operations,” Rajesh Yawale, inspector of the National Disaster Response Force, which coordinates rescue operations in the village, told AFP on Saturday. According to him, many bodies were washed away and some were found trapped between trees downstream. About ten other people were killed in two separate landslides, also south of Bombay.

“Worst floods since 1982”

In parts of the city of Chiplun, still south of Mumbai, water levels reached nearly six meters on Thursday, after 24 hours of uninterrupted rains that submerged roads and homes. Eight patients from a local hospital welcoming Covid-19 patients are believed to have died following the shutdown of ventilators due to a power cut. In neighboring Goa, a woman drowned, the state government told Press Trust of India, in what Chief Minister Pramod Sawant called “the worst flooding since 1982” .

In the coastal plains of Maharashtra and Goa, water levels remained high after the rivers rose from their beds. Terrified residents have climbed to rooftops and upper floors to escape the waters. Further south, in the state of Karnataka, the death toll rose from three to nine overnight, and four other people are missing, according to the authorities.