MUMBAI: Heavy rains flooded roads and railway lines on Monday in India’s financial capital Mumbai, disrupting flights and forcing the closure of schools and colleges.
Just ahead of the morning rush hour, more than 300 mm (11.8 inches) of rain lashed the city of 12 million in the six hours until 7:00 a.m (0130 GMT), civic officials said in a statement. More heavy showers were forecast, accompanying a high tide of 4.40 meters (14 ft) in the coastal city.
“There is heavy traffic on the roads and rail lines too have been affected,” Eknath Shinde, the chief minister of Maharashtra, the western state whose capital is Mumbai, said on X, urging people to stay indoors unless necessary.
Mumbai commuters waded through knee-deep water that partially submerged vehicles in many areas, while traffic clogged the city’s Eastern and Western Express highways.
Water on the tracks forced railway authorities to cancel some long-distance trains. Television images showed some suburban passenger trains halted on inundated lines.
India’s seasonal monsoon rains, which start at the end of May, bring respite from heatwave conditions after a scorching summer but have also triggered widespread flooding across the country in recent years.
In Bihar state in the east of India, separate cases of lightning strikes killed 12 people, taking the toll from such incidents to 20 since the start of the month, a state government official said.
More than 2 million people have also been affected by rivers flooding in northeastern Assam, where the Kaziranga National Park, home to the rare one-horned rhinoceros, was inundated. Six of the animals drowned, authorities said on Sunday.
Assam authorities said 66 people have died in floods and rain-related incidents in the state since May.
Flooding has also affected 31 villages in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh on the Nepal border, the state government said.
Torrential monsoon rains have also triggered floods and landslides in Nepal, where at least 11 people were killed.
In neighboring Bangladesh, more than 2 million people were affected by the third wave of flooding since May, with 300,000 currently stranded in the northern parts of the country, officials from the disaster management ministry said.
With heavy rain forecast in coming days, the situation could deteriorate, the officials added.
FLIGHTS SUSPENDED
Just 10 days after record-breaking showers in India’s capital New Delhi caused the fatal collapse of an airport roof, Monday’s Mumbai rains also caused disruptions in air travel.
Airport authorities had to suspend runway operations for more than an hour from 2:22 a.m., airport sources said.
More than 430 flights were delayed and 49 canceled, the website of tracking service Flightradar24 showed. Airlines IndiGo, SpiceJet and Air India were among those reporting disruptions.
Heavy rains in India’s Mumbai hit transport, shut schools and suspend flights
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Heavy rains in India’s Mumbai hit transport, shut schools and suspend flights
- More than 300 mm of rain lashed the city of 12 million for six hours on Monday, officials said
- More heavy showers were forecast, accompanying a high tide of 4.40 meters in the coastal city
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
