Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state’s worst floods for a century, and emergency responders fear the death toll will rise as they reach areas almost entirely underwater.

Thousands remain trapped in towns and villages cut off by the floods, and heavy rain forecast in coming days threatens to compound the disaster.

Bedraggled survivors massing at evacuation centres have described desperate scenes after days without food or water.

“They were the scariest hours of our life,” 20-year-old Inderjeet Kumar told AFP at a church doubling as a relief shelter in the hard-hit Thrissur district.

“There was no power, no food and no water — even though it was all around us.”

Local officials said the overall death toll in the state since the start of the monsoon on May 29 had reached 357, with 33 of them found dead in just the last 24 hours.

Vehicles lie abandoned at a car showroom and service station after flood waters receded at Chalakudi Taulk in Thrissur District, in the south Indian state of Kerala, on August 19, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

In Thrissur, rescuers searching inundated houses discovered the bodies of those unable to escape as the floodwaters quickly rose.

“They didn’t think that it would rise this high — 10 to 15 feet at some places — when the initial warnings were issued,” said Ashraf Ali K.M, who is leading the search in the small town of Mala.

“Some of them later gave distress calls when the water rose high and fast,” he told AFPat the scene Sunday as dead cattle and other livestock floated past.

Among the dead was a mother and son whose home collapsed around them late Saturday. Another was a local man who volunteered for the search and rescue mission.

His body was retrieved by comrades early Sunday, said Dibin K.S, a Kerala firefighter, in a grim reminder of the perils facing rescuers.

– ‘Pray for Kerala’ –

Thousands of army, navy and air force personnel have fanned out across Kerala.

The army said Sunday that 250 people were evacuated from Pathanamthitta district, many of them sick after days in the pounding monsoon rain.

Food, medicine and water has been dropped from helicopters to isolated areas.

A train from Pune in Maharashtra state headed south on Saturday for Kerala laden with more than one million litres (two million pints) of drinking water.

But roads and 134 bridges have been damaged, cutting off remote areas in the hilly districts of Kerala which are worst affected.

Rising torrents of murky brown water swallowed the only remaining road into the town of Mannar, where 10,000 residents are estimated to be trapped, The Times of India newspaper reported.

Indian volunteers from the Haridwar Mitra Mandal Charitable Trust load aid packets to be shipped to flood-hit Kerala, in Ahmedabad on August 19, 2018. // AFP PHOTO

The state’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan vowed Sunday “to save even the last person stranded”.

Fishermen have sailed inland from Kerala’s coast to join the search, as volunteers erected soup kitchens and appeals went out worldwide for donations.

At St Peter’s Square in the Vatican on Sunday, worshippers held aloft signs reading “Pray for Kerala”, a state with a large Christian population.

“Our solidarity and the concrete support of the international community should not lack for our brothers,” said Pope Francis on Sunday.

Many panic-stricken flood victims have resorted to appeals on social media, saying they cannot get through to rescue services.

In Mala, desperate villagers had to improvise as the floodwaters rose, using kitchen pots as rafts to reach their stricken neighbours.

“They used these huge cooking pots to rescue around 100 people in the first wave of flash floods, as no one was prepared (for a rescue),” one local rescuer told AFP.

There have been moments of cheer amid the tragedy.

In the hilly district of Idukki, rescuers told the Press Trust of India of working through the night to save a newborn boy and his mother from the rising waters.

 – Rain forecast –

But dam levels remain dangerously high, swollen by monsoon deluges, and more rain is forecast.

The Indian Meteorological Department has warned of rain until August 23 across Kerala, including heavy downpours in the districts of Kozhikode, Kannur and Idukki.

Idukki has received more than 321 centimetres (126 inches) of rain since June and is now virtually cut off from the rest of the state.

This picture taken on August 18, 2018 shows a view of a flooded area in the north part of Kochi, in the Indian state of Kerala. // AFP PHOTO

Landslides triggered by the torrential downpours have wiped out entire villages. Some 350,000 people have been left homeless and taken shelter in relief camps.

The floods have caused an estimated $3 billion in damage but the bill is likely to rise as the scale of devastation becomes clearer.

Vijayan, the chief minister, has requested extra funding as well as 20 more helicopters and 600 motorised boats to step up the rescue efforts.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted a brief air inspection tour of the state Saturday and announced an immediate grant of $75 million.

Firefighters discovered the three bodies, reported to be those of a couple and their nine-year-old daughter, overnight inside a car extracted from the rubble of the viaduct.

The findings mean that all those reported missing after Tuesday’s tragedy have now been accounted for, although rescuers said the would continue combing the wreckage.

“The bodies of the final three missing people were found overnight,” Italy’s fire service said on Twitter Sunday.

“The fire service is continuing its inspection of the area in order to rule out the eventual presence of people not reported missing.”

The announcement followed the discovery Saturday of the body of a labourer in his 30s in the rubble and the death of another man in hospital.

The disaster has caused public outrage and unleashed a fierce debate over the state of Italy’s infrastructure.

People and relatives of the victims of the Genoa highway-bridge-collapse disaster applaud the firefighters prior to the State funeral at the Fiera di Genova exhibition center, in Genoa, Italy, 18 August 2018. The Morandi bridge partially collapsed on 14 August, killing at least 41 people. EPA-EFE PHOTO

Rome has blamed the collapse on Autostrade per l’Italia, which manages almost half of the country’s motorway network including the stricken A10 road.

The prosecutor investigating the bridge collapse has criticised past management of Italy’s infrastructure.

Francesco Cozzi said the state had “abdicated” its responsibility to ensure road safety by handing motorway management to the private sector, in an interview published Sunday.

“The philosophy of our system today sees a state stripped of its powers, a sort of absent owner,” he told the Corriere Della Sera newspaper.

 – ‘Won’t accept handouts’ –

Italy bid farewell to the victims, including several children, in Saturday’s solemn funeral that was boycotted by a majority of the families, who resented the presence of politicians and derided the ceremony as “a farce”.

Thousands of mourners packed into a flower-filled makeshift chapel where the coffins of 19 victims had been lined up.

An imam led prayers for two Muslim victims — a poignant gesture in a staunchly Catholic country where the far-right is now in power and which has seen a rise in attacks on foreigners.

Shortly after the official ceremony, Autostrade announced it would make 500 million euros ($570 million) available to help those affected by the tragedy and rebuild the partially collapsed bridge.

The Morandi viaduct dates from the 1960s and has been riddled with structural problems for decades, leading to expensive maintenance and criticism from engineering experts.

The company’s boss Giovanni Castellucci said it would take eight months to build a new steel bridge in place of what was left of the viaduct.

But co-deputy prime ministers Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini rejected the offer as insufficient.

Di Maio said “the state won’t accept Autostrade’s handouts” and demanded “credible compensation”, while Salvini called the sum “the bare minimum”.

“If they think that they have paid for their mistakes then they are mistaken,” said Salvini on Saturday.

The government plans to strip Autostrade of all of its lucrative contracts, which total 3,020 kilometres (1,870 miles) of Italy’s 7,000 km-long motorway network.

The Liguria region, where Genoa is located, declared a year-long state of emergency in the aftermath of the collapse.

The government announced Saturday it would provide 28.5 million euros for the emergency.

The tragedy has shaken the whole country. While key landmarks like Rome’s Colosseum switched off their lights in a sign of respect, Italy’s top-flight football teams are holding a minute’s silence ahead of their opening games of the new Serie A season starting this weekend.

Police in the northern city of Xian began investigating in March when a victim surnamed Zhang complained that hackers had taken control of his computer to steal 100 million yuan ($15 million) worth of cryptocurrency, the Shaanxi Daily reported.

The 100 million yuan haul was made up of the popular bitcoin and ether currencies, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The transfer of the units provided police with a virtual trail, the Shaanxi Daily said, leading them to a suspect surnamed Zhou in the central province of Hunan.

Zhou’s communications led to two more alleged accomplices. Altogether, the three suspects are thought to have stolen 600 million yuan by hacking the computers of individuals and companies, according to the newspaper.

The police investigation is still underway, it said, with officers in three provinces working together last week to take the suspects into custody.

In February an official Chinese publication announced plans to stamp out all remaining cryptocurrency trading in the country by blocking access to overseas-based websites and removing related applications from app stores.

The moves were outlined in a report by Financial News, a publication under the People’s Bank of China, which said the aim was to snuff out the “dying cinders” of cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings “which are glowing once more”.

The 6.3-magnitude quake, centred in East Lombok, struck at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometres (four miles) and was felt across the island, officials said.

It was the third major quake in less than a month to rock the island, after deadly tremors on July 29 and August 5 and numerous aftershocks, but this time there were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

“The earthquake caused people to panic and flee their houses,” national disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Metro TV.

“There have been no reports of death or (serious) damage but people are traumatised.”

Landslides were reported in a national park where hundreds of hikers had been briefly trapped on a volcano after the quake in late July. The park has been closed since that incident.

Residents said the latest earthquake was felt strongly in East Lombok.

“I was driving to deliver aid to evacuees when suddenly the electricity pole was swaying. I realised it was an earthquake.

“People started to scream and cry. They all ran to the street,” East Lombok resident Agus Salim told AFP.

The tremor was also felt in the island’s capital Mataram and on the neighbouring resort island of Bali.

“Everybody ran outside their house. They’re all gathering in an open field, still terrified,” said Endri Susanto, a children rights activist in Mataram.

“People are traumatised by the previous earthquakes and aftershocks never seem to stop.”

– ‘Ring of Fire’ –

The latest tremor comes two weeks after a shallow 6.9-magnitude quake on August 5 levelled tens of thousands of homes, mosques and businesses across Lombok.

At least 481 people died and tens of thousands were injured.

The hardest-hit region was in the north of the island, which has suffered hundreds of aftershocks since.

A week before that quake, a tremor surged through the island and killed 17.

The August 5 quake left more than 350,000 displaced, with many sleeping under tents or tarpaulins near their ruined homes or in evacuation shelters, while makeshift medical facilities were set up to treat the injured.

Badly damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous north of the island, are a headache for relief agencies trying to distribute aid.

The economic toll of the quake — including its impact to buildings, infrastructure and productivity — has been estimated to be at least five trillion rupiah ($348 million).

Dubbed “The Island of a Thousand Mosques”, Muslim-majority Lombok is a less popular destination than its neighbour Bali, the Hindu-majority island that forms the backbone of Indonesia’s $19.4 billion tourist sector.

But Lombok had been earmarked as one of Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s “10 new Balis”, with the regional government hoping to develop it into a major destination, especially in the booming halal tourism sector.

Indonesia, an archipelago of thousands of islands, sits on the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur

In 2004 a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 9.3 undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, in western Indonesia, killed 220,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

Here are some of the tributes:

United Nations

Current UN chief Antonio Guterres voiced deep sadness at the news, describing his predecessor as “a guiding force for good”.

“In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations.

“He rose through the ranks to lead the organisation into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination.

“Like so many, I was proud to call Kofi Annan a good friend and mentor.”

The UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was grief-stricken.

“Kofi was humanity’s best example, the epitome, of human decency and grace. In a world now filled with leaders who are anything but that, our loss, the world’s loss becomes even more painful,” he said.

“He was a friend to thousands and a leader of millions.”

“There are some human beings who will seem irreplaceable to us, rare human beings. Kofi Annan is high among them. Goodbye my dear friend… goodbye Kofi.”

Ghana

President Nana Akufo-Addo declared a week of mourning, saying the national flag will fly at half-mast at home and in the country’s diplomatic missions around the world in honour of “one of our greatest compatriots”.

“He brought considerable renown to our country by this position and through his conduct and comportment in the global arena.

“He was an ardent believer in the capacity of the Ghanaian to chart his or her own course onto the path of progress and prosperity.”

EU

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the “greatest recognition we can give Kofi Annan is to keep his legacy and his spirit alive”.

“He devoted his life to making the world a more peaceful and united place. He fought to end suffering and injustices across the world and helped to rebuild bridges where they had been destroyed.”

– Russia –

President Vladimir Putin said he was “fortunate” to have been in personal contact with Annan while he lead the UN.

“I sincerely admired his wisdom and courage, his ability to make informed decisions even in the most complex, critical situations. His memory will live forever in the hearts of Russians.”

NATO

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said “the UN and the world have lost one of their giants”.

“His warmth should never be mistaken for weakness. Annan showed that one can be a great humanitarian and a strong leader at the same time,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.

Britain

“A great leader and reformer of the UN, he made a huge contribution to making the world he has left a better place than the one he was born into,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Twitter

Former prime minister Tony Blair described him as “good friend”.

“Kofi Annan was a great diplomat, a true statesman and a wonderful colleague who was widely respected and will be greatly missed,” Blair said via his institute’s Twitter page.

– Kenya –

Both key figures in the deadly turmoil that followed Kenya’s 2008 election paid tribute to Annan, who helped mediate an end to the violence.

Former president Mwai Kibaki said Annan “will be remembered for mediating for the return of peace in Kenya”.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga hailed “what became known as ‘the Annan Doctrine’ in which he made it clear that the need to respect sovereignty cannot be used as a shield by governments to brutalise their own citizens and that the international community has a right to intervene”.

South Africa

President Cyril Ramaphosa praised Annan as a “great leader and diplomat extraordinaire” who had advanced the African agenda within the UN and had “flown the flag for peace” around the world.

Zimbabwe

“A rare breed of diplomat; soft spoken but unshakeably firm,” tweeted Nelson Chamisa, the main opposition leader in Zimbabwe — where Annan visited days before the July election.

“He had great love for world peace & democracy. A believer in Zimbabwe & its people. Go well son of Africa, Champion of the world!”

France

“We will never forget his calm and resolute approach, nor the strength of his fighting spirit,” President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

The Elders

The Elders organisation — a group of statesmen co-founded by Annan which speaks out on global issues — hailed him as “a voice of great authority and wisdom in public and private”.

“The world has lost an inspiring figure — but one whose achievements will never be forgotten, and whose commitment to peace and justice will endure to inspire future generations,” deputy chair Gro Harlem Brundtland said in a statement.

The president’s comments come after several top social media platforms including Facebook and Spotify curbed or banned accounts of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” Trump said in a series of morning tweets.

“Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.”

The president called censorship “a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police,” adding that “if you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed.”

“Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!”

Jones, whose site InfoWars has accused victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting of being “actors” in a plot to discredit the gun lobby, violated Facebook’s hate speech policies, the social network said.

Facebook said the pages were taken down for “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.”

Twitter — Trump’s favored medium, where he boasts some 53.8 million followers — meanwhile opted to allow Jones to keep using the platform but in a limited capacity, removing his ability to tweet for an unspecified period of time.

Some reports suggested his account was put in “read-only” mode for a week, meaning he cannot tweet or retweet.

South Korean women’s basketball player Lim Yung-hui and North Korean footballer Ju Kyong-chol carried the blue and white flag as the Korean athletes paraded into Jakarta’s Gelora Bung Karno stadium.

It is the second such symbolic gesture this year by the two Koreas, who also walked together at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony — an event that heralded an unprecedented warming of ties.

The North and South, still technically at war, are also joining forces in women’s basketball, canoeing and rowing during the 40-sport, two-week regional Olympics.

The athletes marched together to the song “Arirang”, considered the most well-known folk song on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.

It the 11th time the Koreas have marched together at a global multi-sport competition, Yonhap added, and the first such occasion at an Asian Games since the 2007 Winter Asiad in Changchun, China.

– April 8, 1938: Born in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi to an aristocratic family from the Fante tribe.

– 1962: After studying economics in Geneva he joined the World Health Organization and went to work in a number of other UN bodies including the UN refugee agency.

– 1972: Annan obtained a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

– 1993-96: He served deputy head of UN peacekeeping, during the Rwandan genocide and the war in Bosnia.

– January 1, 1997: He became UN secretary general, the first from within the organisation and the first from sub-Saharan Africa. He was re-elected for a second five-year term in June 2001.

– October 12, 2001: Annan and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

– 2005: He became embroiled in a corruption scandal over the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq. He was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

– 2007: He became a founding member of The Elders, a group of statesmen who speak out on global issues. He also set up the Kofi Annan Foundation which says it aims to promote better global governance and work for peace.

– February 2012: Annan is chosen by the United Nations and the Arab League to mediate in the Syrian war, but he throws in the towel five moths later.

– August 18, 2018: Annan dies in Switzerland after a short illness.

In a statement, ex-CIA bosses appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents — including Robert Gates, George Tenet, Porter Goss, Leon Panetta and David Petraeus — denounced Trump’s decision to strip Brennan of his security clearance.

Dozens of other former spies signaled their support for the statement.

“The president’s action regarding John Brennan and the threats of similar action against other former officials has nothing to do with who should and should not hold security clearances — and everything to do with an attempt to stifle free speech,” the statement read.

Describing Trump’s move as “inappropriate and deeply regrettable,” they insisted “we have never before seen the approval or removal of security clearances used as a political tool, as was done in this case.”

Two of those who signed the statement — former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director Michael Hayden — are, according to Trump, on a list of people who could lose their clearance.

Former officials often retain security clearance after leaving office to allow their successors to consult them on issues of the day.

The White House said Brennan — a notable Trump critic — had been stripped of clearance due to his “erratic” behavior.

But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump admitted his decision on Brennan’s clearance was linked to the ongoing federal probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election.

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, (it) is a sham,” Trump was quoted as saying in the interview. “And these people led it!”

“So I think it’s something that had to be done,” he added.

Trump’s actions have been widely condemned, including by respected former admiral William McRaven, the commander of the US Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

“Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation,” he said.

But most of Trump’s Republican allies have defended the move or refused to condemn it publicly.

On Friday, Trump said he would likely remove the security clearance of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, who has been targeted by Trump supporters, in part because his wife worked for a company that produced a dossier alleging Russia had incriminating evidence against the now president.

“Bruce Ohr is a disgrace. I suspect I’ll be taking it away very quickly,” Trump told journalists.

The Washington Post, citing senior administration officials, reported that the White House has drafted documents revoking the clearances of officials, both current and former, who have criticized Trump or been involved in the Russia probe.

The newspaper added that aides have also discussed the best times to release them in order to distract attention from negative news.

Dozens of military and coastguard helicopters flew in torrential rain to reach high risk areas, officials said, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi describing the crisis as “devastating”.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced late Friday that the monsoon death toll had dramatically risen to 324.

State officials said they expected the number to rise further as more landslides were reported and as dam and reservoir levels remained dangerously high.

With power and communication lines down, thousands remained trapped in towns and villages cut off by the floods amid growing shortages of food and water.

Helicopters have been dropping emergency food and water supplies across Kerala, while special trains carrying drinking water have been sent to the state.

Dozens of dam and reservoir gates across the state have had to be opened as water levels reach danger levels, inundating many villages.

While more than 300,000 people have taken shelter in relief camps, particular fears have been raised for Chengannur, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, which has been cut off for four days.

Troops and military boats have been sent to the town and media reports said bodies had been found. The state government did not immediately give an updated toll early Saturday.

– Helicopter plea –

Saji Cherian, who represents Chengannur in the Kerala assembly, said he feared there were at least 50 dead in the town and broke down in tears as he pleaded for more help on Asianet TV late Friday.

“Please give us a helicopter. I am begging you. Please help me, people in my place will die. Please help us. There is no other solution, people have to be airlifted,” he said.

“We did what we can with fishing boats we procured using our political clout. But we can’t do more.”

With no end in sight to the rains, people all over the state of 33 million have made panic-stricken appeals on social media for help, saying they cannot make contact with rescue services.

Some say they are trapped inside temples and hospitals as well as submerged homes.

Authorities have warned that rains and strong winds are predicted for many parts of Kerala on Saturday and Sunday.

Prime Minister Modi arrived in Kerala on Friday night and held meetings with state leaders and went on a brief air inspection tour.

“I took stock of the situation arising in the wake of the devastating floods across the state,” Modi said in a Twitter statement.

He added that the government “is providing all possible assistance to Kerala. This includes financial assistance, providing food grains and medicines.” An immediate grant of about $75 million would be given to the state.

Dozens of military helicopters stepped up rescue operations across the state and in one a heavily pregnant woman Sajita Jabeel, 25, gave birth just after her rescue, an Indian Navy spokesman said.

“It was a very critical case, the lady was in labour, her water had broken,” the pilot, the pilot Commandeer Vijay Verma told News18 television.

“We took a doctor along, we winched her up, it took some time though because we had to winch down two people to help her get on to the strop.”

Another pilot, Captain P. Rajkumar, winched 26 people up from a rooftop after guiding the helicopter through trees and other houses.

A video of his Sea King pulling up the victims has been widely shared on social media. He ended up with 32 people in his Sea King helicopter.

Rajkumar was given the Shaurya Chakra medal for bravery this week after lifting a fisherman from the sea when cyclone Ockhi hit India last year.