Toll from India monsoon hits almost 700
(AP)
Updated: 2005-07-29 19:15

Rescuers scouring flood-ravaged neighborhoods and outlying villages found dozens of new bodies on Friday, pushing the death toll from record monsoon rains in western India to almost 700, officials said, reported the Associated Press.

Firefighters prepare to retrieve scooters after a road caved in due to rains in Ahmadabad, India, Thursday, July 28, 2005. [AP]

Some 373 of the dead were from Bombay and the surrounding area in Maharashtra state, said N. Nayar, an official at the government's emergency control room in the city, India's financial hub.

Three more people died Friday in a stampede which was sparked by rumors of a tsunami and a burst dam at a Bombay shantytown, raising the death toll to 18. 

At least seven children were among the dead. More than 25 people were injured.

Officials put the total death toll across the region at 699.

Officials has stepped up efforts to reassure the public with the loudspeakers that there was no truth to rumors of a tsunami, storm or a breach in a local dam.

Police has arrested 10 men for sparking the panic among the crowds.

"Don't go by word of mouth. Don't believe in rumors," the city's Police Commissioner A.N. Roy said in a message to citizens.

On Tuesday, the city was hit by an unprecedented downpours of up to 37 inches of rain — the heaviest rainfall since India began keeping weather records in 1846. The rains stretched into Wednesday, paralyzing Bombay and devastating huge areas, but ended Thursday, leaving an overcast sky.

The government imposed a mandatory holiday Thursday, ordering all workers to stay home and forcing the closure of banks and the Bombay Stock Exchange. The Stock Exchange reopened Friday.

In the northern Bombay suburb of Saki Naka, relief workers and survivors searched the ruins of a shantytown crushed when a water-soaked hill collapsed on top of it. At least 110 people were killed and more than 45 others were missing and feared dead.

Their faces covered with green masks, relief workers used spades to search for survivors as cranes lifted twisted wooden and tin debris. Elsewhere, navy divers used inflatable rafts to reach areas cut off by water while soldiers and civil defense workers trudged to outlying villages, digging in search of the living and the dead.

"It was terrible to pull out little babies from under boulders and mud," said firefighter S. Shinde, wiping his brow with mud-caked hands.

In Bombay, most victims drowned, were crushed by falling walls, or were electrocuted.

Wednesday morning, after the deluge, the government warned people to remain in their offices or homes. But for some the warnings came too late.

"I lost count of the number of people who were electrocuted. There were clusters of people who stepped on exposed wires," said civic relief worker Arya B.

By Friday, mobile phone services were restored, but landline phone service was still spotty in some areas. Some neighborhoods remained without electricity. Most roads had been cleared of the hundreds of cars abandoned after they stalled in the rain.

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