Rescuers continued searching for survivors as the death toll from a building collapse in Mumbai rose to more than 30. The disaster came as India's financial capital mopped up from floods caused by heavy monsoon rains.
Image: Reuters/S. Andrade
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Workers sifted through rubble overnight to Friday after a 117-year-old condemned building collapsed in Mumbai on Thursday, trapping an unknown number of people.
"Overnight we pulled out 15 bodies, taking the total death count to 33," Tanaji Kamble, a disaster management spokesman for Mumbai's civic authority, told news agency AFP.
Rescue workers searched through the night for survivorsImage: Reuters/A. Andrade
Some 13 people have reportedly been rescued and are recovering in hospital, with 14 fire and rescue officials also injured in the six-storey building, the chief fire official, P.S. Rahangdale, said.
On Thursday, about 200 police and fire personnel sorted through the debris. The injured were taken to the nearby J.J. Hospital in the south of the city while locals joined a 43-member National Disaster Response Force team in picking through piles of debris in a desperate hunt for survivors.
Police had yet to determine what caused the collapse near Crawford market, an area where many Muslims live.
Monsoon floods leave over a thousand dead in South Asia
Across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh millions of people have been affected by the worst floods in recent years.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A. Nath
Massive monsoon rains
Across northern India, southern Nepal and northern Bangladesh millions of people have been affected by the worst floods in recent years.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/A. Nath
A wide area
This year's rainy season has caused widespread destruction, with the severe weather expected to continue.
Biggest downpour in years
In India millions of people have been affected by the floods in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Nearly half of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, has been swamped by floods. In northwest India, 54 people died in landslides caused by heavy rain. Most of them died in a single incident that swept two buses off a mountainside.
Image: picture-alliance/AA/I.Shaikh
A third of Bangladesh swamped
In Bangladesh, more than 5.7 million people have been affected by monsoon flooding, with more than a third of the country being submerged. At least 134 people have died.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/R. Asad
Devastating hunger
More than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of crops have been washed away in Bangladesh while another 600,587 hectares of farmland were partially damaged. The country already lost about 1 million metric tons (1.1 million US tons) of rice in floods in April. The United Nations World Food Program warned that Bangladesh was now at risk of "devastating hunger."
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/R. Asad
Impoverished Nepal
In Nepal, 90,000 homes have been destroyed and 150 people have been killed. As well as floods, the rains triggered landslides that have hindered rescue efforts.
Image: picture-alliance/NirPhoto/N. Maharjan
Beloved national park struck
In Assam, conservationists are fearing the worst for the local wildlife. One Bengal tiger and 15 rare one-horned rhinos were found dead. There are fears that poachers could seek to capitalise on the exodus from Kaziranga National Park as animals seek higher ground.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/U. Saikia
Dirty water
Flood waters bring with them all sorts of problems. In Dhaka industrial chemicals have mixed with rain water bringing a rainbow of polluted floods. In remote regions, health workers have started sending mosquito repellent, bleaching powder and water
purification tablets.
Image: picture-alliance/NurPhoto/M. Hasan
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The building gave way in the early morning on Thursday after the city suffered two days of torrential rain. It had housed a sweet shop warehouse on the ground floor, and cramped apartments on the upper floors. It also housed a nursery school despite having been declared unsafe by local authorities - no children had arrived at the school when the collapse occured.
The government gave final notice for the building's demolition in May 2016, but some families had refused to leave, according to Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra.
More background
- Unusually heavy monsoon rains have inundated India, Bangladesh and Nepal in recent weeks, killing more than 1,200 people in floods. At least eight deaths in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi were reported to be flood-related on Thursday.
- Mumbai in particular has suffered a host of deadly incidents in recent years, mainly due to aging and poorly-constructed buildings.
- The collapse is the second in Mumbai in recent weeks. In late July, 17 people were killed when a four-storey building in the suburb of Ghatkopar collapsed after suspected unauthorized renovations.
