[DAWN] Rescuers searched submerged villages in southwest India on Sunday in a desperate hunt for survivors after floods killed more than 350 people and stranded thousands without food or water.Entire villages in Kerala have been swept away in the state's worst floods for a century, and emergency responders fear the corpse count 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 corpse count 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.
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.