An alert pilot of Air India’s Haj flight today helped avert a possible disaster at NSC Bose Airport this morning.
The Boeing-747 flight carrying 449 haj pilgrims from Jeddah was about to land in three minutes when the pilot noticed another aircraft on the same runway and contacted the Air Traffic Control (ATC) officers alerting them to it.
There was poor visibility and planes were landing under CAT-II ILS conditions. The ATC officers immediately contacted the pilot of the Alliance Air’s cargo flight that was on the runway. The cargo flight, IC-7901 was carrying mails to Guwahati.
NEW DELHI (AP) — The Indian Coast Guard rescued two people off India’s east coast during a search for more than 300 illegal immigrants missing for the past four days and feared dead, police said Tuesday.
At least 10 bodies have washed ashore near the Andaman Islands, said S.P. Sharma, the Coast Guard inspector-general on the islands.
Survivors told Indian authorities that more than 300 people from Bangladesh and Myanmar had jumped from a rickety boat that had been drifting for 13 days in the Indian Ocean and tried to swim to shore. Authorities rescued 105 others after pulling in the boat.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced after floods inundated more than 70 villages in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam.
Three districts- Kamrup, North Lakhimpur and Sonitpur - have been affected by the floods.
A senior official said an embankment of the Putimari river was breached late on Tuesday following incessant rains.
GAUHATI, India (AP) — An overcrowded, speeding bus crashed into a stationary truck in northeastern India on Tuesday, killing 23 people and wounding 44 others, police said.
The bus was carrying laborers to work before dawn in the Dhubri district of India’s Assam state, some 185 miles (300 kilometers) west of the state capital, Gauhati.
“The bus carrying 67 passengers hit a stationary potato-laden truck with great speed, leading to the fatalities,” said Dhubri police chief Parthasarathi Mahanta.
At least 80 people were killed and more than 150 injured when thousands of pilgrims stampeded Tuesday at a Hindu temple in the historic town of Jodhpur in western India.
JODHPUR, India (AP) — At least 168 people were killed and 100 injured when thousands of pilgrims stampeded Tuesday at a Hindu temple in the historic town of Jodhpur in western India, officials said.
Severe overcrowding apparently caused the crush as more than 12,000 people gathered at the temple to celebrate a Hindu festival, Jodhpur Police Superintendent Malini Agarwal said.
At least 168 people were killed in the stampede, said Naresh Pal Gangwar, the district collector.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — A young boy was killed and 17 people hurt when a bomb exploded in south New Delhi Saturday, an Indian police spokesman said.
The bomb, which was thrown by two bikers, exploded when a child picked it up, New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. The boy was about 10 years old, he said.
A man and his wife saw the men drop the explosives. The boy called to them that they had left something behind, but they ignored him, according to Delhi’s deputy police commissioner, H.G.S. Dhaliwal.
The Indian navy has joined the rescue effort in the eastern state of Orissa where hundreds of thousands of people are still marooned by the floods.
In the worst-hit districts of Kendrapada, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur and Puri, people continue to grapple with hunger, thirst, snakes and diseases.
In Jajpur district, thousands have protested against inadequate relief.
Vast tracts of north and east India are under flood waters and at least 200 people have died in the last few days.
Floods caused by heavy monsoon rains have been most damaging in Orissa and the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, displacing nearly four million people, officials say.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — At least 135 people have died in the last two days in India as a result of flooding, bringing the death toll in monsoon floods to 2,364 since June, according to disaster-management officials in India.
The deaths this weekend happened in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Uttaranchal, according to a report from the Disaster Management Division of the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs.
Eight-two people died in Uttar Pradesh, 34 died in Himachal Pradesh and 17 lost their lives in Orissa and two died in Uttaranchal, authorities said.
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — The death toll in a string of explosions that ripped through busy marketplaces in New Delhi has risen to 20, police said Sunday.
The number of people wounded in the Saturday blasts also went up to 98, said New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat.
Bhagat said police have not made any arrests in the attack, for which the Muslim militant group Indian Mujahedeen took responsibility.
Five minutes before the first blast, CNN-IBN — CNN’s sister network in India — received an E-mail from the group warning of an impending strike.
