100 dead as cold wave grips India

Mon, 04 Jan 2010

New Delhi - At least 100 people, mostly the homeless and elderly, have died in a cold wave sweeping across the northern and eastern regions of India, media reports said Monday. The deaths have been reported since Wednesday from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh; the national capital, New Delhi; and the eastern states of Bihar and Jharkhand.

Dense fog and temperatures dropping to zero degrees Celsius were registered in several places, including Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab.

The weather bureau said the cold conditions would persist over the next few days.

Uttar Pradesh was hit the hardest with a death toll of at least 72 after 16 more deaths were reported since Sunday, the CNN-IBN network reported.

Most of the victims were homeless people in districts such as Banda, Fatehpur, Sonabhadra and Kanpur, the report said.

Temperatures across major towns and cities in Uttar Pradesh have ranged from 1 to 4 degrees.

The states of Jharkhand and Bihar reported 13 and 11 deaths, respectively, over the past few days, the IANS news agency reported.

The remaining deaths were reported from Delhi and the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand were arranging for shelters for the poor and issued orders for bonfires to be lit along roads for the homeless.

Delhi and neighboring areas witnessed spells of rain Sunday that brought down the minimum temperature to 9.5 degrees.

Heavy fog also hampered vehicular traffic and delayed 100 flights and 22 trains across northern India Sunday.

The cold weather played spoilsport for holiday tourists visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra as the world-famous monument remained cloaked in fog over the weekend.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301976,100-dead-as-cold-wave-grips-india.html.