NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Parts of north-west Delhi were flooded on Thursday after a breach in a canal that supplies water from a nearby state, and repair work was being carried out to minimize the impact, a senior local official said in a social media post.
Residents of the capital have experienced a series of extreme weather events in the past two months, from sizzling temperatures to floods and heavy rainfall that caused a roof collapse at the city’s airport.
“Today (in the) early morning there has been a breach in one of the sub-branches of Munak Canal … Water has been diverted to the other sub-branch of the canal,” Delhi Water Minister Atishi said in a post on X.
Visuals from ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed residents wading through knee-deep muddy water in the district of Bawana in north-west Delhi.
The Munak canal is situated on the Yamuna river near Delhi’s northwestern border with the state of Haryana, which also runs the canal. No casualties have so far been reported from the latest flooding.
Parts of Delhi have recently suffered from a severe water shortage after the hottest summer on record, and Atishi went on a brief hunger strike to demand more water for the city.
Delhi relies for most of its water on the Yamuna river that runs through the capital and which flooded a year ago after heavy rains.
Multiple rivers in India’s eastern state of Bihar are also close to breaching their banks as water flows downstream from neighbouring Nepal, parts of which were also flooded earlier this week.
Heavy rainfall in Assam in the east of the country has triggered flash floods in recent weeks in which at least 79 people were killed and thousands displaced.
(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous word in the headline)
(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta; Editing by David Holmes)
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