Flood kills 17 patients

CITY: At least 17 patients died after floods swept through a hospital in central Mexico, disrupting the power supply and oxygen therapy, authorities said.

The facility, in the town of Tula in Hidalgo state, was inundated after a river overflowed following heavy rain.

“In this honourable job there are good, very good, bad and very bad days; today is one of the latter,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.

The hospital was flooded in a matter of minutes, and a power cut disrupted oxygen treatment, said Zoe Robledo, general director of the Mexican Institute of Social Security, which operates the facility.