At least 87 people have died, most due to drowning, after severe storms in southern Russia, local officials told Interfax news agency Saturday. That number includes at least 70 people who are thought to have drowned in flooding after heavy rainfall in Krasnodar, a Black Sea holiday resort some 1,200 kilometres south of Moscow. The casualties included several elderly and at least one child, officials said. Another 5 people were electrocuted after lightning hit a power transformer. Nearly 24 hours of continuous heavy rains flooded about 1,000 homes and left 22,000 people without electricity, while railways and roads were washed away or made impassable by mud. A state of emergency was declared in several cities in the region, and operations were severely hampered at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
