KOCHI, India (Reuters) – A minimum of 22 individuals have been killed after heavy rains lashed the south Indian state of Kerala over the weekend, officers mentioned.
Rainfall throughout the state led to flash floods and landslides in a number of areas, with the Indian military and navy referred to as out to rescue residents.
Some 13 of these have been killed after a landslide in Kuttikkal village, officers and eyewitnesses mentioned.
“There have been 4 landslides that occurred there yesterday, the hill behind me, which introduced water and different objects downwards,” a neighborhood resident informed Reuters associate ANI on Sunday, standing in entrance of now-barren hillside.
P.Okay. Jayasree, the highest authorities official in Kottayam district the place the landslide passed off, mentioned virtually half of the casualties have been from a single household.
“One household fully misplaced six members,” he mentioned.
Gentle rainfall throughout the state is anticipated to proceed, though climate alerts in lots of areas had been withdrawn, the state’s catastrophe administration committee mentioned in an announcement.
Kerala was additionally a sufferer to the worst floods in a century in 2018 that had killed a minimum of 400 individuals and displaced round 200,000.
India, with 1.3 billion individuals, depends on rainfall to help its inhabitants, lots of whom reside depend on farming. However extreme rainfall could cause floods, landslides and water-borne illnesses.
(Reporting Jose Devasia in Kochi; Writing by Alasdair Pal; Enhancing by Edmund Blair)
