INDIA: Rescuers searched for survivors buried under debris with bare hands and aid was rushed yesterday to regions in western India's Maharashtra state cut off by the worst ever monsoon rains that paralysed the country's financial capital Bombay, claiming nearly 800 lives.
BM Kulkarni, who heads the state's emergency control room, said 273 people had died in the port city of Bombay - also known as Mumbai - while another 513 perished in floods across the province that received a record 94cm (37 inches) of rain on Tuesday.
Much of it came over a short period in the evening and television footage showed the sprawling and teeming city, used to heavy rains during the monsoon, inundated with water, with cars choking almost every main road.
"Most places in India don't receive this kind of rainfall in a year. This is the highest ever recorded in the country's history," RV Sharma of the meteorological department said.
The heaviest rainfall in India registered in the northeastern town of Cherrapunji - the wettest place on earth - was 84cm (33 inches) in July 1910.
The Bombay Stock Exchange remained shut as did many banks, financial and educational institutions in the city that began to recover slowly from the killer deluge yesterday.
Collapsed telephone and rail networks began limping back to normal, as did Bombay's roads.
The first flight in two days left the city's waterlogged airport, among the nation's busiest as television news channels carried rolling text messages from worried family members trying to make sure their loved ones were safe.
Tens of thousands of people spent their second night at their workplaces trapped by water that flowed like a river through the city's streets.
Thousands of others who had abandoned their cars submerged under water returned yesterday morning once the levels began subsiding. A fleet of helicopters at one of the city's airports were also drowned in the downpour, precluding their use in rescue operations.
"Mumbai deserves more attention," prime minister Manmohan Singh told a news conference in the city yesterday as he announced a grant of R5 billion (€96 million) for relief work. Its infrastructure must be modernised and made adequate for the commercial business capital of the country, he added.