Flooding, house collapses and lightning strikes caused by heavy rains killed at least 14 people in northern India, taking the reported death toll in the annual monsoon season to 79, officials said Sunday. Heavy rains lashed the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh state, flooding all the major rivers in the region, Surendra Srivastava, a police spokesman told The Associated Press in Lucknow, the state capital. Fourteen people died Saturday in a variety of rain-related incidents. Army and paramilitary forces were put on high alert and relief camps set up to evacuate people left homeless or trapped by the flood waters, Charanjeet Singh, a state government official said. Eleven people died in the same region after heavy rains earlier in the week, officials said. Monsoon rains usually hit India from June to September. The precipitation is crucial for farmers whose crops feed hundreds of millions of people, but it also brings massive destruction across the country. Every year, thousands of people are killed by flooding, collapsing houses and other rain-related incidents. Since the start of this monsoon season at least 79 people have been reported killed in eastern and northeastern India. Meanwhile, flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have washed away thousands of homes and displaced more than 50,000 people in India's northeastern state of Assam, officials said Sunday. A government spokesman said the state's eastern district of Lakhimpur was the worst hit, with an estimated 50 villages inundated by flooding that began Saturday. "The situation is critical with many parts of the district under waist-deep water," Lakhimpur police chief S.A. Karim told a foreign news agency by telephone. A first wave of monsoon flooding in Assam last month killed eight people and displaced 400,000 others, most of them also in Lakhimpur district.
