Flash floods and mudslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed eight people and displaced some 75,000 in Indias north-eastern states of Asom and Tripura, officials said Tuesday.
A Tripura government spokesman said five people, three of them children, were killed late Monday when a landslide buried their mud-and-thatch huts in Churaibari village, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the state capital Agartala.
"Six people were injured in the incident and one or two bodies might still be trapped under the debris," Gopika Das, a magistrate in North Tripura, told AFP by telephone. "The villagers were sleeping when the incident took place," he added.
Flood control officials said some 4,000 people were displaced when floodwaters submerged the northern Tripura town of Dharmanagar.
All major rivers in Tripura, bordering Bangladesh, are flowing above the danger level, the officials said. In Asom, three women were killed Monday night in a landslide in Chandranathpur village in the southern Cachar district, about 310 kilometres from the states main city of Guwahati.
The latest deaths bring to 148 the number of people killed nation-wide in weather related incidents since the monsoon hit India on May 18. An Asom Flood Control department official said nearly 71,000 people had been affected by floods that began in the state May 31 with an estimated 2,000 villages hit.