300 train passengers trapped by mudslides evacuated

INDIA: Authorities rescued nearly 300 people trapped for two days on a train after mudslides buried the track following monsoon rains in India's northeast, officials said Wednesday.

Swirling flood waters, meanwhile, claimed the life of a woman who drowned when the wooden boat she was trying to escape on capsized south of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, said Gautam Ganguly, a state official.

The death brings to 123 the number of people killed in India since the monsoon began working its way up the subcontinent on May 25, arriving a week before it was expected. The monsoon season ends in October.

In the northeast - a region wedged between China, Myanmar and Bangladesh and connected to the rest of India only by a small sliver of land - floods and mudslides have killed at least nine people and left some 6,500 people homeless.

On Tuesday, soldiers reached the train stranded in a dense jungle south of Gauhati and escorted the passengers through the vegetation to the town of Haflong, about 280 kilometers (175 miles) from the state capital, said T. Rabha, a railway spokesman.

Thousands of villages in northeastern India have been submerged by floods which have already killed 12 people and displaced nearly 160,000, officials said Wednesday.

The states of Assam and Tripura have been the worst affected by the flooding and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains that hit the region on May 31, officials said.

"The flood situation has worsened with nearly 3,000 villages submerged forcing an estimated 150,000 people to take shelter in raised platforms and makeshift tarpaulin tents," Assam Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister, Bhumidhar Barman, told AFP.

The minister said four people drowned Tuesday in separate incidents taking the toll in the floods in Assam to seven. Thousands of people in Assam's worst-hit districts of Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Cachar, Karimganj, and Hailakandi were caught unawares when floodwaters swept through their homes late Tuesday following breaches in embankments and dykes.

"We are providing relief materials like rice and other essentials, besides medicines and healthcare facilities," the minister said. Gauhati, Wednesday, AP