At least 11 dead as Chinese highway bridge collapses into river
Hundreds of rescuers are involved in a desperate search for some 20 vehicles missing after a highway bridge in China collapse during torrential rains, killing at least 11 people.
Chinese president Xi Jinping has been briefed on the operation and demanded “all-out efforts” from rescuers to find any survivors. China’s national fire and rescue authority said it had dispatched a team involving over 850 officials as well as 90 vehicles, 20 boats and 41 drones to join the search.
The highway bridge in Shangluo, a city in the northwestern Shaanxi province, collapse at around 8.40pm local time on Friday evening, sending an estimated 25 vehicles plunging into the swollen river below.
Authorities said 11 bodies had been recovered from five of those vehicles as of Saturday morning, but as the day wore on Xinhua news agency reported that there had been no more cars recovered, and an estimated 30 people are still missing, feared dead.
Pictures released by state media showed a section of the bridge snapped and folded down at an almost 90-degree angle into the rushing brown water below.
According to AFP, one witness told state media he had approached the bridge but other drivers started “yelling at me to brake and stop the car”.
“A truck in front of me didn’t stop and fell into the water,” he said.
Mr Xi urged local authorities to take responsibility during a critical period for flood control in the region, ordering them to enhance monitoring and early warning systems.
Extreme rains have brought flooding to large swathes of western and southwestern China in recent days, an area that is particularly prone to landslides due to its mountainous landscapes and the powerful rivers that run through the region.
Hubei city’s Three Gorges Dam, China’s largest, was put on high alert last week after dozens of rivers breached their banks and flooded townships.
At least six people have been reported dead in nearby Chongqing after flooding in a dozen districts and counties since Thursday, raising the water levels in 29 rivers.
In Sichuan province, to the southwest, another 30 people were missing and around 40 houses destroyed in flooding and storms on Saturday, Xinhua reported.
Sichuan’s hardest-hit Hanyuan county has seen both roads and communications infrastructure damaged or destroyed, complicating rescue efforts, and teams had been working since dawn to restore connectivity and clear debris from highways.
From record-breaking heatwaves to unprecedented rainfall, China has been facing increasing numbers of extreme weather events in recent years, testing the country’s ability to cope with the impact of the climate crisis.
Almost a year’s worth of rain pounded a small town in Henan on Tuesday. It recorded 606.7mm (24 inches) of rainfall in Dafengying over a 24 hour-period, the most anywhere in China, according to national weather forecasters. That compares with the average annual rainfall of 800mm in the area.
Changing rainfall patterns coincide with a dramatic decline in the country’s economic expansion, which in past decades has seen China build a huge network of motorways, high-speed railways and airports across even the country’s most remote districts.
The economic slowdown means officials and industries are cutting corners to try and continue expanding this network, leading to a proliferation of poor-quality infrastructure and poor safety supervision.
Outcry in India as police force shops to identify owners
Police in northern India have been accused of fuelling an “economic boycott of Muslims” after they asked restaurants to display the names of their owners to “avoid confusion” during a Hindu holy month when thousands of devotees will undertake a pilgrimage on foot.
Police in the Muzaffarnagar district of the most populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh claimed the order was communicated orally and issued yearly during the month of monsoon in the Hindu calendar. The state authorities have also asked food carts to comply with the orders, according to reports.
Hundreds of thousands of devotees of Hindu godShiva undertake the pilgrimage on foot, known as “kanwar yatra”, to holy sites in the northern states of Uttarakhand, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh during the period to collect water from the river Ganga, which is then offered at local Shiva temples. This year, the journey would begin on 22 July.
The police have cited the practice of dietary restrictions among devotees, such as no consumption of meat, to justify the directions given earlier this week.
Abhishek Singh, the senior superintendent of police, said all small and big eateries in around 240km of their jurisdiction have been instructed to display the names of “their proprietors or those running the shops”.
He said the decision was taken to ensure “there is no confusion among the devotees” and to avoid any possible law and order situation in the state.
“This time one saint requested us that it should be done in order to avoid eating anything which might corrupt their efforts during this holy month,” inspector Rakesh Kumar, Muzaffarnagar police’s public relations officer, told Reuters.
The order has been severely criticised by opposition parties and members of civil society for further discriminating against the embattled minorities in the state which was “reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa”.
Previous calls for an economic boycott of Muslims by extreme-right organisations in northern and western parts of India had left the minorities petrified of running their businesses.
“Such orders are social crimes, which want to spoil the peaceful atmosphere of harmony,” opposition Samajwadi Party’s chief Akhilesh Yadav said in a post on X.
Pawan Khera, spokesperson for the main opposition Congress, asked in a post on X, whether the direction was “a step towards economic boycott of Muslims”.
“This was called apartheid in South Africa and in Hitler’s Germany it was called ‘Judenboycott’,” said Hyderabad lawmaker Asaddidin Owaisi.
Muzaffarnagar, now ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had witnessed communal clashes in 2013 that killed about 65 people, mostly Muslims, and displaced thousands.
Although Mr Modi was sworn-in for a rare third straight term last month with the support of his allies, his BJP lost 29 seats in UP, where one-fifth of the 240 million population is Muslim.
BJP and Mr Modi’s federal government have, on multiple occasions, been accused by civil society, opposition groups, and some foreign governments of making decisions aimed at fanning religious discrimination. The prime minister, however, says he does not oppose Islam or Muslims and is “resolved” to not discriminate between Hindus and Muslims.
Despite the statements, discrimination runs rife in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP lawmaker in Muzaffarnagar earlier this month said Muslims should not name their shops after Hindu deities during the yatra. He said when the devotees “come to know [that the shops they eat at are run by Muslims], it causes controversy”, according to the Times of India.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has banned the sale of meat in the open along the routes for the kanwar yatra as a mark of respect for those undertaking the journey.
Indian preacher at centre of crowd crush: ‘Who can change inevitable?’
The Indian preacher at the centre of a massive crowd crush that killed 121 people earlier this month has stirred a controversy by saying that no one could change destiny.
“Who can change the inevitable? Everyone who enters this world has to leave one day,” Suraj Pal, known among his followers as Bhole Baba, told local reporters. “Only the time is uncertain.”
In an interview with IANS news agency, he claimed that the stampede at his event left him in “deep depression”.
He previously said he was “deeply saddened” by the 2 July incident which occurred during a satsang, or prayer meeting, in Hathras, 200km southeast of the national capital Delhi, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
A preliminary investigation found that thousands more people than permitted had turned up at the event and, as it got over, hundreds of them attempted to collect dust the preacher had walked on before he left the venue.
Mr Pal’s prayer meeting had permission for 80,000 people but let in about 250,000, which authorities said led to the crush.
While some of the event’s organisers have been arrested, Bhole Baba has not been named in the police case or questioned.
The preacher has denied any involvement, alleging a conspiracy against him.
Relatives of the victims and other citizens have been demanding his arrest and criticising the lack of any legal action against him.
On X, one user said: “100% scot-free. Will likely do another satsang soon.”
Another wrote: “That’s how 99.9 religious preachers think about their own followers…They just use these followers to earn money and fame.”
“Why do people follow these scammers?” wrote another.
Mr Pal reportedly left his job as a police constable in the late 1990s, christened himself Narayan Sakar Vishwa Hari and became a Hindu religious preacher.
The self-styled “godman” claimed to resurrect the dead and even attempted to take a 16-year-old girl’s body from a crematorium, promising her family a miracle, police told Reuters.
His lawyer AP Singh earlier said Bhole Baba had arrived at his ashram in Uttar Pradesh’s Kasganj area.
“He has reached his ashram and will stay here. He came here from another ashram. He was never at anyone’s place or any hotel or other country,” Mr Singh said.
The Uttar Pradesh state government has formed a Special Investigation Team and a judicial commission to investigate the stampede.
“Please keep faith in the government and the administration. I have faith that anyone who created the chaos would not be spared,” the preacher earlier told ANI.