Kerala floods: Death toll rises to 357; 50000 rescued, red alert in 11 districts

The death toll on Saturday climbed to 357 people in flood-hitKerala with over 3 lakh people displaced and homeless, state chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan informed media.

The Chief Minister further informed that the statesuffered a loss of21,000 croresin the worst floods of the century as he urged people to "unite as one"to tackle this.

Kerala has been facing the worst flooding in a century. The rescue and relief operations in the state are in full swing and efforts are being made to evacuate people from flood-affected areas.

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The Centre has launched massive rescue and relief operations in the southern state. Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have been asked to mobilize additional manpower, boats and helicopters to scale up the rescue and relief operations. Food packets and drinking water are also being rushed.

So far, around 42 navy, 16 army, 28 coast guard and 39 National Disaster Relief Force teams have been deployed in rescue operations.

67 helicopters, 24 aircraft, 548 motorboats and thousands of rescue personnel from Navy, Army, Air Force, NDRF, Coast Guard are pressed into service to evacuate people from submerged areas to relief camps and distribute relief materials, news agency ANI reported.

Various state governments have also extended help to flood-ravaged Kerala. Central Ministries have made food, water and medicines available, including 3,00,000 food packets, 6,00,000 MT of milk, 14,00,000 litres of drinking water, 150 portable water purification kits with the capacity of 1,00,000 litre each.

On Saturday, after conducting an aerial survey of the situation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a relief fund of Rs. 500 crore to the state along with an ex-gratia of Rs. 2 lakh to the next kin of the deceased and Rs. 50,000 to those critically injured.

Meanwhile, the weather department has predicted no respite from rainfall in Kerala for the next 48 hours.The weather office warned of more heavy "red" category rains on Saturday, news agency Reuters reported.