Flooding in India’s Assam state kills at least 41 people

Floods caused by heavy monsoon rain have killed at least 41 people in India’s northeastern Assam state, officials said Thursday, as rescue and relief work continued.

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the deaths were linked to monsoon rains that began in June. He said thousands of livestock had been washed away.

Sarma said cloudbursts upstream and local heavy rainfall 436 percent above normal had flooded villages that had not seen such damage in recent history.

He said all agencies, including India’s air force, the State Disaster Response Force and the National Disaster Response Force, were working around the clock on rescue and relief operations.

Authorities have set up almost 150 relief camps, where close to 30,000 people are sheltering, Sarma said. He said 900,000 people in more than 1,800 villages had been affected by the flooding.

A separate Assam state government statement released late Wednesday said authorities were using payload drones to improve delivery of relief materials to hard-to-reach places. More than 50 small boats have been deployed in shallow-water areas where state and national disaster response boats cannot operate. The statement said the Indian air force and armed forces also air-dropped relief supplies to inaccessible locations.

Flood-related disasters happen every year in India during the monsoon months, after long summers in which many parts of the country face water scarcity and drought. Hundreds of millions of people in India rely on annual monsoon rains to support agriculture and industry.

Deadly weather-related disasters are common during the monsoon season from June to about August, but experts say climate change and urbanisation are increasing their frequency and severity.

Last week, at least 19 people were killed in flash floods and landslides caused by monsoon rains in Nagaland and Indian-administered Kashmir.