A mosque was submerged from flooding in Bagalkot district in North Karnataka, about 379 miles from Bangalore, India on Monday.
By HARI KUMAR
Published: October 5, 2009
NEW DELHI — More than 240 people have died, and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless in southern India after four days of heavy rainfall at the end of the monsoon season, the government said Monday.
The sudden rains, coming after a severe drought, deluged villages and caused widespread disruption in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Floodwaters are now thought to be receding, officials said, but reports have also indicated that crops are ruined, thousands of cattle dead, and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed.
V. S. Prakash, director of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Cell, said rainfall was catastrophically heavy during the past four days.
Flooding is an annual event in India, which depends on monsoon rains for agriculture, but it often causes loss of life and property. The contrast has been especially marked this year, with many of the districts now deluged after a drought that had badly damaged the summer crop.
The 240 deaths reported in recent days in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh represented only a fraction of the deaths attributed to flooding during the monsoon season. According to government statistics, 1,184 such deaths have been reported in 127 Indian districts this year.
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