The death toll from two days of monsoon storms and landslides in Bombay passed 80 yesterday, with another 37 reported killed in the nearby states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
Sixty-eight of the dead in Bombay were victims of a mudslide that buried a shanty town in the suburb of Ghatkopar on Wednesday. Three other people died in a smaller mudslide, and three drowned in Bombay's swamped streets. Officials said the casualty list had mounted yesterday with nine people "sucked into overflowing drains and drowned" in the suburb of Thane.
The rain finally abated yesterday, after a 48-hour deluge that wreaked chaos in Bombay and other areas of western Maharashtra state.
At the Ghatkopar landslide site, rescue officials feared more bodies lay buried under the mass of mud and rock. "This is the worst landslide I have seen in 10 years. The toll will easily go above 100," a divisional fire officer said.
Rescuers estimate that some 150 slum dwellings were buried in the landslide caused by hilltop lavatory blocks seeping sewage into the ground over a period of 10 years. "The sewage had slowly loosened the earth and undermined the stability of the hill. The rain water was just a trigger," the fire officer said.
Philippine rescue teams have found two more bodies in the ruins of a collapsed garbage dump, taking the death toll from the avalanche of refuse and mud to 139, a Red Cross spokeswoman said.