BOGIBEEL, India - India on Tuesday opened its longest rail-road bridge in a poor northeastern state as part of efforts to boost defenses on its sensitive border with China.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi drove an inaugural cavalcade along the 4.9 kilometer (3 mile) long Bogibeel bridge over the Brahmaputra river to inaugurate the project in Assam state which has taken nearly two decades and $800 million to complete.
The bridge, near the city of Dibrugarh, will enable the military to speed up the dispatch of forces to neighboring Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China.
With the opening of the bridge, the rail journey from Dibrugarh to the Arunachal Pradesh capital Itanagar has been cut by 750 kilometers.
India lost territory in Arunachal Pradesh in a 1962 war with China.
The bridge has been designed to bear the weight of India's heaviest 60 tonne battle tanks and so that fighter jets can land on it.
India opened its longest bridge, the 9.1km Dhola-Sadiya bridge, in 2017 to connect Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, also to boost tactical defenses.
Construction of the Bogibeel bridge was agreed by the government as part of a 1985 agreement to end years of deadly agitation by Assamese nationalist groups.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
Severe monsoon flooding has killed 213 people in western India, an official said Sunday, as rescuers continue to sift through villages devastated by torrential rains.
The death toll in Gujarat state jumped from Wednesday's total of 123 as waters recede from low-lying areas, allowing workers to reach remote spots where bodies are starting to appear.
"The death toll in Gujarat this monsoon has risen to 213," A.J Shah, director of relief operations with the Gujarat government, told AFP.
Overwhelmed authorities, who expect the toll to rise still further, said they have struggled to cope with the number of bodies needing identification and post-mortems, resulting in delays in confirming the latest deaths.
An official at the state's emergency control room explained that "only after a post-mortem is conducted we can officially confirm death of a person".
"Since many bodies were found, postmortem took time hence the sudden jump in numbers," the official, who requested anonymity, told AFP.
The rise comes after rescuers plucked 25 bodies, including 17 members of a single family, on Wednesday from two submerged villages in hard-hit Banaskantha district of Gujarat.
Rescue workers have moved close to 130,000 people from low-lying, dangerous areas as helicopters and boats try to reach those still stranded.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who surveyed the devastation across Gujarat from the skies last week, in his radio show on Sunday reassured flood-hit states that all help was being provided to them.
As well as Gujarat, the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam have been hard-hit by monsoon flooding, while pockets of the eastern states of Odisha and Bihar have also been affected.
In Assam at least 77 people have been killed and a state-wide emergency relief operation has been underway since April. Tens of thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
