An Indian snacks vendor rests on a lawn on a hot summer day in Ahmadabad, India.
Week-long heat wave kills over 1,800 in India
HYDERABAD, India — Dizzying temperatures killed hundreds more Indians over the past day, causing water shortages in thousands of villages and driving the death toll from a weeks-long heat wave to at least 1,826 yesterday.
Meteorological officials called the heat wave “severe” and warned that it would continue for at least two days across a huge swath of the South Asian country from Tamil Nadu in the south to theHimalayan foothill state of Himachal Pradesh.
Most of those killed by heat-related conditions including dehydration and heatstroke have been in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where 100 people died just on Thursday as temperatures hovered about 43 degrees Celsius.
Thousands of water tankers were delivering supplies to more than 4,000 villages and hamlets facing acute water shortage in the central state of Maharashtra, state water department officials told Press Trust of India.
People across India were also reporting scorched crops and dying wildlife, with some animals succumbing to thirst.
Indians were doing whatever they could to beat the heat, from staying in the shade or plunging into rivers to drinking buttermilk, onion juice and plenty of water./AP