An unrelenting heatwave sweeping across northern India has killed at least 52 people in New Delhi, the Times of India reported on Thursday, as the country grappled with record temperatures this summer.
At least 52 bodies were brought to hospitals in the past two days, the Times of India said, most of them destitute and poor people who lived and worked in the open.
India has recorded more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases this summer and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18, when northwest and eastern India recorded twice the usual number of heatwave days.
“A prolonged summer should be classified as a natural disaster,” The Hindu newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday, pointing to water shortages and record power demand.
The health ministry ordered federal and state institutions to ensure immediate attention to patients, while hospitals were directed to make more beds available.
The weather office has forecast above normal temperatures for this month as well, and Delhi saw its warmest night in over 50 years on Wednesday, with a minimum temperature of 35.2 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), data from the weather department showed.
Billions of people across Asia are grappling with extreme heat in a trend scientists say has been worsened by human-driven climate change.
Heatwave kills dozens in India’s capital, reports Times of India
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Heatwave kills dozens in India’s capital, reports Times of India
- India recorded more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases this summer and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18
Gordon Brown ‘regrets’ Iraq War support, new biography says
- Former UK PM claims he was ‘misled’ over evidence of WMDs
- Robin Cook, the foreign secretary who resigned in protest over calls for war, had a ‘clearer view’
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown regrets his failure to oppose Tony Blair’s push for war with Iraq, a new biography has said.
Brown told the author of “Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” James Macintyre, that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who opposed the war, had a “clearer view” than the rest of the government at the time.
Cook quit the Cabinet in 2003 after protesting against the war, claiming that the push to topple Saddam Hussein was based on faulty information over a claimed stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.
That information served as the fundamental basis for the US-led war but was later discredited following the invasion of Iraq.
Brown, chancellor at the time, publicly supported Blair’s push for war, but now says he was “misled.”
If Brown had joined Cook’s protest at the time, the campaign to avoid British involvement in the war may have succeeded, political observers have since said.
The former prime minister said: “Robin had been in front of us and Robin had a clearer view. He felt very strongly there were no weapons.
“And I did not have that evidence … I was being told that there were these weapons. But I was misled like everybody else.
“And I did ask lots of questions … and I didn’t get the correct answers,” he added.
“Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose,” will be published by Bloomsbury next month.
