Rescuers save 354 passengers from flooded train

Rescuers saved all 354 passengers who were trapped for days in a train that had slowly filled with flood water to neck height, officials said today as raging monsoons coninued to submerge vast swathes of Indian countryside.

“The situation is serious. There is water everywhere. Villages, roads and railway lines are all submerged,” federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters after an aerial tour of flooded areas in western Gujarat state.