AHMEDABAD
\nHeavy rains battered India and Pakistan\u2019s coastal areas along the Arabian Sea, flooding cities in western India\u2019s Gujarat state and forcing thousands of people from their homes, with authorities predicting a cyclonic storm to develop by Friday.
\nPeople waded through waist-high waters that partly submerged vehicles and roads in parts of the state, visuals from Reuters television showed.
\nAt least 28 people have died this week from rain-related incidents in the state, officials said, as meteorologists in India and neighbouring Pakistan warned that more heavy downpours and strong winds were expected to lash the coast.
\n\u201cThere is no electricity for the last two days,\u201d said Prabhu Ram Soni, who lives in Gujarat\u2019s coastal city of Jamnagar. \u201cI have an eight-month-old daughter and an asthma patient, my mother, who is on oxygen support.\u201d
\nMore than 18,000 have been evacuated since Sunday from cities near the coast, disaster management authorities said. The army was also involved in relief efforts in the state which was hit in last year by cyclone Biparjoy, damaging infrastructure and leading to the evacuation of more than 180,000 people.
\nHeavy rains also lashed Jamnagar, home to the world\u2019s largest oil refinery complex, owned by Reliance (RELI.NS), opens new tab, the district collector, B K Pandya, told Reuters.
\nAt nearby Vadinar, Nayara Energy, backed by Russian groups including its largest oil producer, Rosneft, runs another refinery.
\n\u201cThey are operational,\u201d Pandya said, when asked if rain had affected work in the refineries, adding that authorities were focusing on rescue efforts in the district.
\nA deep depression off Gujarat is expected to intensify into a cyclonic storm by Friday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said, but it was forecast to move away from the Indian coast over the next two days.
\nIn Pakistan, the weather department warned fishermen to not venture into the sea until Saturday.
\nThe IMD has forecast extremely heavy rainfall in Gujarat\u2019s Bharuch, Kutch and Saurashtra districts on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AHMEDABAD Heavy rains battered India and Pakistan\u2019s coastal areas along the Arabian Sea, flooding cities in western India\u2019s Gujarat state and forcing thousands of people from their homes, with authorities predicting a cyclonic storm to develop by Friday. People waded through waist-high waters that partly submerged vehicles and roads in parts of the state, visuals …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":69595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69604,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69586\/revisions\/69604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}