Thousands flee as floods engulf New Delhi

Thousands flee as floods engulf New Delhi

NEW DELHI (AFP): Thousands of people fled their homes in the
Indian capital yesterday as flood waters from a rain-swollen
river gushed into crowded residential districts of the city,
officials here said.

State-run railways suspended train services as the army went
on alert for a large-scale evacuation in case more areas were
inundated by an enormous discharge of water from the adjoining
flood-ravaged state of Haryana.

The city fire department, which rescued some 400 people
trapped in their submerged homes, warned that the Yamuna River
water level could reach a record high later yesterday.

"We are receiving distress calls every minute," a fire
department spokesman said, adding that some eight residential and
business districts had been flooded.

There have been no reports of deaths or injuries as a result
of the latest flooding in New Delhi, but more than 600 people
have died across India since the annual monsoon rains began in
June.

Surging waters from Haryana overnight washed away a bridge
spanning the Yamuna and submerged a three-kilometer stretch of
road linking the city's eastern districts to the rest of the
city, witnesses said.

Thousands of people living along the banks of the river were
evacuated as the river breached its banks in several places,
officials said.

New Delhi Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana said he has asked
his cabinet colleagues to supervise anti-flood operations and
added that policemen in the hundreds had been deployed to help
stranded people.

Railway authorities said train services to and from New Delhi
were either cancelled or suspended as a vital railway bridge was
threatened by the floods.

Commuters were stranded in the city's three main railway
stations as the authorities also froze the suburban trains
ferrying passengers to several towns ringing New Delhi.

Officials said the Haryana water overflow could trigger the
worst floods since 1978, when vast stretches of New Delhi were
under water for days, leading to one of India's largest airborne
evacuation operations.

Meanwhile, the death toll from the collapse of a two-story
building in the Himalayan state of Sikkim rose to 27 yesterday,
the Press Trust of India said. Seven more bodies had been pulled
from the ruins of the building which collapsed late Tuesday
during heavy rains near Sikkim capital Gangtok.

Twenty-three people have been hospitalized and eight more were
feared missing or dead yesterday.

In the northern hill state of Himachal Pradesh, army
helicopters dropped medicine and food packets to some 7,000
stranded Hindu pilgrims and about 500 foreign and Indian tourists
camping in two picturesque valleys.

The army has also begun evacuating tens of thousands of
marooned people from submerged homes and farms in Haryana and
Punjab, among the worst-hit states in northern India.