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Heavy rain makes 150,000 homeless in eastern India

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-09-07 17:28

NEW DELHI: At least 150,000 people have been made homeless by heavy rainfall in a large portion of southern West Bengal, eastern India, in the past three days, an official said Monday.

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Houses were swept away during the heavy downpour and embankments were breached at several places in the tidal mangrove forest in the Sundarbans, the region famous for Bengali tigers, forcing villagers to flee.

The state government has already sent relief material to the affected, said the report.

More than 100 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless in a cyclone disaster in West Bengal in May.