Rains kill 22 more in northern India

Lucknow: Heavy rains in northern India killed another 22 people, bringing the nationwide death toll from this year's monsoon to 296.

''At least 22 more people died of rain-related accidents including houses collapsing in the last 24 hours,'' said police spokesman in Lucknow, Surendra Srivastava.

State officials said they were evacuating residents from flimsy, unsafe houses that are vulnerable to rain damage.

''The work has to be done on a war footing as the monsoon has set in and we can expect more rains in the coming few days,'' senior state official Ambika Chaudhry said.

Eight members of a family were killed in Khiri, 200 km northwest of Lucknow, when the walls of their dilapidated house collapsed, Srivastava said. The dead included three children.

In another incident, five members of a family died when the roof of their house fell on them in Hardoi in central Uttar Pradesh, he said.

On the outskirts of Lucknow, three people were killed when the wall of a school building collapsed.

''To protect themselves from rains, these people had taken shelter in the school compound when the wall collapsed. All of them died on the spot,'' Srivastava said.

Several other people were electrocuted by falling power cables and by lightning, he said.

Floods, collapsed houses and lightning routinely kill hundreds of people during annual June-September monsoon rains.