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At least 11 people died as a result of extremes weather conditions in India on Wednesday, as the country remains gripped by severe heatwave, landslides and floods, officials and media told Reuters.
The country’s capital city, New Delhi, was sweltering due to extreme heatwave conditions in what was recorded as the hottest night in six years on Tuesday.
According to Times of India, at least five deaths were reported in the capital city’s hospitals as a result of heatstroke. Meanwhile, landslides and floods triggered by continuous rainfall in India’s northeastern state of Assam claimed the lives of at least six people on Tuesday night, as per officials cited by Reuters.
“A landslide buried a woman and her three daughters alive,” a state disaster management official, Siju Das, said by telephone.
“Their house was on a slope, and they died on the spot around midnight,” he said, adding that the bodies were retrieved after a three-hour search operation by rescuers.
“A three-year-old was killed too.”
Billions across Asia are grappling with extreme heat this summer, in a trend scientists say has been worsened by human-driven climate change.
Since March, temperatures have soared to 50 degrees C (122 degrees F) in Delhi and the nearby desert state of Rajasthan, while more than twice the usual number of heatwave days were recorded this season in the country’s northwest and east.
These conditions stemmed from fewer thundershowers, as well as warm winds blowing in from neighbouring arid regions.
In Assam, more than 160,000 people were affected, with waters surpassing the danger level in the Kopili, one of the largest tributaries of the Brahmaputra, which ranks among India’s biggest rivers.
More than 30 people in the state have died since the end of May in floods and landslides brought by heavy rain, officials said.
— Additional input by Reuters
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