Violent storms in India kill at least 86 people

Sharif ignites firestorm

NEW DELHI, May 14, (Agencies): Indian authorities Under the Prime Minister of Narendra Modi said Monday at least 86 people have been killed and over 100 injured in a fresh wave of violent sandstorms and thunderstorms that battered vast swathes of the country.

Winds of over 100 kms (60 miles) per hour struck parts of north, east and southern India late Sunday, uprooting trees, electricity pylons and damaging houses, officials from federal and state disaster management agencies said.

The fatalities came just 10 days after a sandstorm left more than 134 dead -- most of them in Agra, the city of the Taj Mahal.

Hail, wind and thunderstorms brought down walls, trees and power pylons in Uttar Pradesh state, killing 48 people, T.P. Gupta of the state disaster management department told AFP.

Eight people also drowned in the state’s Barabanki district after their boat capsized in a river due to strong winds.

Gupta said 80 people were injured by the gusts that flattened nearly 40 houses across India’s most populous state.

The country has been gripped by a freak weather system since the beginning of May, with many parts of the country experiencing extreme conditions.

Similar storms hit the region every year but this year has been the deadliest in decades.

In the eastern state of West Bengal 14 people were killed Sunday after lightning struck a house in the state capital Kolkata, including four children as thunderstorms separately ravaged several localities.

Lightning bolts killed twelve people in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, while two people died in both Bihar state and the Indian capital New Delhi.

Indira Gandhi International Airport was closed for more than two hours because of the winds, with 70 flights diverted.

Andhra Pradesh had also been hit by more than 40,000 lightning bolts on May 1, killing 14 people in a matter of hours.

Modi

Finmin stable after kidney transplant:

Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was stable on Monday after undergoing a kidney transplant, his hospital said in a statement.

Jaitley, who had largely worked from home over the past month, was admitted to the All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in the Indian capital on Saturday.

“The surgery has been successful. Both the recipient and donor are stable and recovering well,” the hospital said. Jaitley could be out of action for about a month following surgery, a finance ministry official said. Jaitley, 65, is a prominent member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. In 2014 he had a gastric bypass operation to keep his diabetes in check.

Last month, he cancelled trips to London and Washington because of ill-health.

Sharif ignites firestorm with interview:

Former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has sparked a firestorm at home and in India after suggesting Pakistani militants were behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks, with the National Security Council slamming his remarks on Monday.

The former premier approached what is largely seen as a red line in the country by touching on criticism of Pakistan’s armed forces, especially their alleged use of proxies in India, in the interview with Dawn newspaper published over the weekend.

“Militant organisations are active. Call them non-state actors, should we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it to me. Why can’t we complete the trial?” Sharif told Pakistan’s leading English daily, referring to stalled court cases against several suspects.

The Mumbai attacks left 166 people dead and brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.

10 die in Bangladesh stampede:

A stampede on Monday by thousands of poor villagers outside the home of a businessman distributing alms ahead of Ramadan killed at least 10 women and injured about 50 people, police in southeast Bangladesh said.

It is a custom for devout Muslims to donate money or goods to the poor before or during the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which is expected to begin on Wednesday or Thursday this week.

The stampede began after people jostled to collect clothes and other items at the residence of the owner of a steel mill, said police official Rafiqul Alam in the district of Chittagong, about 260 kms (165 miles) from Dhaka, the capital.

“There were 10,000 to 12,000 people, mostly women and trying to push to each other to collect alms ahead of other and that led stamped,” he told Reuters. The injured were treated at a nearby hospital and allowed to go, police said.

Blasts and gun battle hit Jalalabad:

Afghan security forces battled for hours against a group of attackers who stormed a government building in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Sunday after a coordinated assault that killed at least 15 people and wounded 42, local officials said.

A car bomb was detonated at the entrance to the state accounts office before a group of about six attackers armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades rushed the building, the officials said. There were multiple blasts as they fought off security forces in a gun battle that lasted much of the day.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, in a busy area of the city with many other official buildings nearby, including a school in which about 1,000 girls were trapped as the fighting raged.

It was the latest in a series of high-profile attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan this year and put heavy pressure on the Western-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani.