At least eight people have died in floods and mudslides triggered by heavy rains in India's remote northeast region, officials said Tuesday according to the Associated Press. Several railway stations were not working because of floods, said Nazreen Ahmed, a senior administrative official in Assam's Dima Hasao district. He said that nearly 200,000 people in the district were cut from the rest of the state, as roads and bridges leading to it were either blocked by landslides or washed away. The army deployed helicopters to help with rescue efforts. Officials said four people were killed on Monday following heavy rains and mudslides in the region's frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh. Two others died when their houses on a small hillock caved in the state's capital Itanagar, and two road construction workers were killed due to mudslides at another location. Four other people were reported killed in the neighboring Assam state. The state's disaster management agency said nearly 700 villages were underwater. The Indian Meteorological Department forecast very heavy to extremely heavy rain in the region for the next four days. States across northeast India were battered by heavy rains on Friday, with reports of landslides and damage to houses and roads coming from Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Arunachal so far. "Moisture incursion from the Bay of Bengal is taking place over to Northeast India due to strong lower level southerly and southwesterly winds during May 13-17," a statement issued by the Guwahati center of the India Meteorological Department said on Friday. Under the influence of these weather systems, the Met department said widespread rainfall accompanied with thunderstorm/lightning and heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places very likely over Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. Landslides and floods are common in India's Himalayan north. Scientists say they are becoming more frequent as global warming contributes to the melting of glaciers there. In 2020, flash floods killed nearly 200 people and washed away houses in Uttarakhand state. In 2013, thousands of people were killed in floods there. — Agencies
