Floods, landslides and building collapses caused by India's heaviest-ever recorded rainfall have killed at lest 786 people and brought the financial capital Mumbai to a near-standstill, police said on Thursday. Weather officials predicted more heavy rain for the city of 15 million, where schools, banks and stock markets were closed and public transport barely operating.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who on Thursday toured the rain-ravaged areas in a helicopter, said he was "deeply pained by this human tragedy" and announced emergency aid totalling seven billion rupees for the Maharashtra state government.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry estimated damage in Maharashtra at 10 billion rupees.
B.M. Kulkarni, who heads Maharashtra state's police emergency control room, told AFP that 273 people had died in Mumbai and at least 513 in other parts of the state.
He said the death toll rose sharply after more than 160 deaths by drowning were reported in Mumbai.
"Around 166 people drowned in these floods and these numbers came in only much later," Kulkarni said.
Aerial pictures of Mumbai showed much of the city marooned in debris-laden water. Long queues of vehicles were stranded on highways.
However, the main airport reopened early afternoon after being closed since Tuesday due to waterlogged runways.
Heavy casualties occurred in a remote village in Raighad district of the rain-lashed state, where at least 100 people from 20 families were feared killed by a landslide, PTI said.
Tonnes of mud flattened houses in Jui village, 170 kilometers south of Mumbai, on Monday but news of the tragedy reached authorities only three days later, the report said.
Authorities were air-dropping food and water to stranded residents of Mumbai and Raighad, the Hindi news channel Aaj Tak said.
The city's weather bureau said Mumbai received 944.2 millimeters (37.1 inches) of rainfall in a 24-hour period ending mid-morning Wednesday, the most rainfall ever recorded in a single day in India and beating a record which has stood since July 1910.
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