Mudslides kill 14 in northern India

Mudslides triggered by heavy rains killed 14 workers sleeping in a tin shed near a Hindu shrine in northern Indian today as the death toll from the monsoon season across South Asia rose to at least 1,908.

The workers were killed in the mountainous Dhaba Moth area near the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu-Kashmir state and three injured workers were pulled from the debris, police Superintendent M.L. Mehra said.

Heavy downpours in the past five days have inundated villages and claimed dozens of lives in northern and western India, where farmers had prayed for rain only a week earlier amid a prolonged dry spell.

Monsoon rains have drenched India’s remote north-east and the eastern state of Bihar since June.

At least 1,116 people have died in India, 663 in Bangladesh, 124 in Nepal and five in Pakistan from the monsoon since June, mostly from drowning, mudslides and waterborne diseases.

Nearly two-thirds of Bangladesh has been submerged by the worst flooding in six years. The government says 20 million people – or one-seventh of the population – will need food aid over the next five months.

Waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, pneumonia and respiratory problems continued to spread among flood victims.

The Bangladeshi government’s health directorate reported that more than 9,000 people were sickened by waterborne diseases on Wednesday and yesterday.

The illnesses have claimed more than 60 lives in Bangladesh since June, it said.

Nearly 4,000 medical teams have been working in the flooded region.

The death toll could rise in India as reports arrive from remote areas of western states cut off by the flash floods. The rains have washed away telephone lines and blocked rail and road traffic in several parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra states.

Yet, some were cheering this week’s rains in northern and western states, where much of India’s farming is done.

The new federal government had feared a drought there would slow the booming economy and spoil its efforts to boost incomes of villagers who voted the Congress party into power after feeling ignored by the previous Hindu-nationalist government.