Troops and helicopters were deployed Friday to India's northern desert state of Rajasthan to rescue trapped residents as monsoon rains flooded yet another district, officials said. Helicopters also dropped aid parcels to residents cutoff by road after heavy rains lashed the state's normally arid Jahalawar district in the desolate Thar desert, officials said.
More than 150 people have already died and thousands left homeless in nearby Jodhpur and Barmer districts.
"Four villages are inundated and hence helicopters are now been deployed because of the distances here," an army spokesman said.
Soldiers on powerboats were called in to the region to scour for residents who might need evacuating to higher ground as helicopters dropped food, milk and medicines to others.
He said the task was difficult given the huge size of the state's districts and isolation of some of its villages.
Thirty-five people who clamored atop a hillock to escape the fast-rising waters were rescued Friday, state relief secretary R. K. Meena said in the state capital of Jaipur.
"The flood situation is grim but under control and there has been no human losses in Jahalawar," Meena said. However he warned the state should remain on alert as dams threatened to overflow and rivers continued to burst their banks.
Lakes as wide as 10 kilometres (six miles) have formed, cutting sand dunes in half, amid warnings Rajasthan's non-porous gypsum rockbed could lead to an ecological catastrophe as accumulated water would not seep into the earth for months.
"It's already a nightmare as we see from the geological point of view," said a spokesman from the state-run Central Arid Zone Research Institute, based in the flood-hit district of Jodhpur.
The flash floods, caused by 10 days of heavy monsoon rains, have also killed tens of thousands of animals, whose bloated carcasses have raised fears of water-borne diseases, another state official said.
Flooding also damaged the Munnabao railway station, from where India's only train to Pakistan departs.
The state's public works minister, Rajendra Singh Rathore, has put Rajasthan's financial losses at four billion rupees (86 million dollars).
In Barmer, which had suffered a drought for the last six years, the rains initially brought cheer to parched villages, but now residents stranded on sand dunes are mourning lost family members and homes.
Source: Agence France-Presse
