Indian floods claim another 12 lives

Floods caused by heavy monsoon rains killed 12 more people in a southern Indian state and shut down one of its key airports for a third day, officials said on Saturday.

At least 43 people have died – including the 12 new deaths in the past 24 hours – this week in Andhra Pradesh state, where this year’s monsoon deluge has submerged hundreds of villages and forced tens of thousands of people out of their homes, said chief minister Y Rajasekhara Reddy.

The casualties in Andhra Pradesh brought the nationwide death toll from this year’s monsoon rains to 354, according to reports from local officials in various parts of the country. An accurate national death toll is not kept, and the total number of people killed across India is likely to be much higher.

Most of those killed either drown in floods, are crushed when poorly built houses collapse or are electrocuted when raging waters expose live wires.

The monsoon season, which runs from April to September, is eagerly awaited each year in India, where some 600 million people depend on agriculture for a living. However, it also brings widespread destruction, and thousands are affected annually in flooding.

In Andhra Pradesh, the downpour has intensified in the past week, disrupting the state’s road transport network and forcing authorities to shut schools and offices across eight districts.

The airport at Visakhapatnam, the state’s port capital, remained shut for a third day after water from overflowing rivers submerged its runway, said Debabrata Kantha, the state’s top disaster management official.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated to safer places in the past week, Kantha said.

Elsewhere in the country, tens of thousands of others have been affected by the flooding.