Freezing Temperatures Kill Nearly 600 in South Asia

[senorpepr]

DHAKA/LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - A cold wave sweeping Bangladesh and northern India has killed 92 more people, officials and newspapers said on Tuesday, taking the toll due to the freezing temperatures in the region since Christmas to 574.



Most of those killed due to exposure to the bone-chilling cold were beggars and the homeless living in the densely populated and poor plains of South Asia.

Weather officials said there would be no respite from the cold spell as temperatures were forecast to dip further over the next few days.

Newspaper reports in Bangladesh said the cold had killed 54 people on Monday, mostly in the country's western and northern districts, raising the toll to 154 over the past week.

A senior Bangladesh Health Directorate official declined to give details of the deaths and said hospitals had been reporting such cases every day since the cold spell started.

"During the cold wave, many people die mainly of pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma," Dilwara Begum, additional director general of Bangladesh Health Directorate, told Reuters.

In the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has accounted for the highest number of deaths this winter, 38 people died due to the cold in the past two days, a government spokesman said, taking the toll in the state so far to 407.

"We have created night shelters and also distributed a lot of blankets to poor people," Navneet Sehgal, a Uttar Pradesh official, told Reuters.

"But I do not deny that considering the size of our population and poverty these were not enough," he said.

Schools in the neighboring state of Bihar, where 13 people have died due to the cold snap, would open on January 12, a week later than scheduled after winter vacations to protect children from the biting cold, officials said.

Winter temperatures in northern India and Bangladesh are not as extreme as the freezing weather in North America or northern Europe.

They have mostly ranged between 37 and 43 Fahrenheit across northern India with the pilgrim town of Varanasi recording the lowest temperature, 35.4 Fahrenheit.

Hundreds of homeless people die every year because they do not have warm clothes or blankets.

[JCT777]

It's a shame to hear about so many deaths because of the cold.