Road and rail traffic has been affected in Mumbai since Friday morning, hitting the office-bound commuters.

Railway tracks have been flooded at various points on the Central Railway and Western Railway networks serving the city.

Although services have been delayed by upto 30 minutes, there has been no major dislocation so far.

However, owing to heavy rains in northwest Maharashtra and south Gujarat, train services on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-New Delhi sectors were affected since early Friday, according to officials.

Valsad in south Gujarat was among the worst-hit with two feet water-logging in the station, preventing movement of local and long-distance trains.

A railway official said that several trains in both directions on the two routes (Mumbai-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-New Delhi) have been regulated at various stations until the water levels recede.

In adjoining Thane district, railway tracks were flooded at Nalla Sopara, Mumbra, Thane, Diva and other places, leading to train delays on all the routes.

In Mumbai, several low-lying areas have been waterlogged in the city and suburbs, hitting vehicular movement badly.

An extra high tide, measuring 4.26 metres, is expected from 2.30pm onwards and officials are apprehensive the situation could worsen if the rainfall continued.

According to Mumbai Weather Bureau, since 9am, south Mumbai received an average one cm while suburbs averaged 1.62 cms rainfall.

Weather Bureau director VK Rajeev said that heavy rains are expected to continue lashing Mumbai, coastal Konkan and other parts of the state for the next two days.

Till date, Mumbai city has received nearly 55 percent and suburbs averaged 47 percent of the annual rainfall quota.

BEIJING: Flooding in western China, the worst in 50 years for some areas, has triggered a landslide that buried up to 40 people and destroyed a high-profile memorial to a devastating 2008 earthquake.

There was no immediate word on the chances of survival for the 30 to 40 people buried in the city of Dujiangyan, but rescue workers with search dogs had rushed to the area, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Mudslides and flooding are common in China’s mountainous areas, killing hundreds of people every year. Deforestation has led to soil erosion and made some parts of China prone to mudslides after strong rains.

In nearby Beichuan county, flooding destroyed buildings and destroyed exhibits at a memorial for the earthquake five years ago in Sichuan province that left 90,000 people dead or missing. The quake left the Beichuan county seat unliveable. The town was abandoned and 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) of ruins was turned into a memorial and museum.

The flooding also caused the collapse of an almost 50-year-old bridge in a neighboring county, sending six vehicles into the raging waters and leaving 12 people missing.

Since Sunday, flooding in Sichuan has affected 360,000 people, damaging or destroying 300 homes, and forcing at least 6,100 emergency evacuations, state media reported.

BERLIN: More than 80,000 emergency personnel including firefighters and soldiers were on duty Saturday, working aggressively to contain the most dramatic floods in Germany in a decade. Thousands of residents were still unable to return to their homes, and bridges and streets were impassable in many regions of eastern and southern Germany.

Twenty people reportedly have already died in the floods acrosscentral Europe after several days of heavy rains.

German news agency dpa said people in Magdeburg in Saxony-Anhalt were anxiously waiting downstream as the crest of the Elbe river approached Saturday, while residents further upstream were starting to clean up the debris that was left along the river.

In Magdeburg, authorities evacuated a nursing home and turned off electricity in several parts of the city. Where the Saale river meets the Elbe, about 3,000 people had to leave their homes.

High water levels were also reported in Hungary, Slovakia and theCzech Republic, while thousands of people in Austria were busy shoveling away mud left by the receding floodwaters of the Danube.

In Hungary, around 2,000 residents of the town of Gyorujfalu northwest of the capital of Budapest were evacuated because authorities were afraid the levees wouldn’t withstand the pressure of the Danube’s waters. Another 980 residents had to leave their homes along the river out of precaution.

The rising waters of the Danube, Europe’s biggest river, were expected to reach Budapest on Monday. The water levels were already at 28.2 feet (8.60 meters) on Saturday and expected to rise to 29.4 feet (8.95 meters) at the peak of the flood — inching close up to the top of the river’s flood fences, which are 30.5 feet (9.30 meters) tall.

In Slovakia, the Danube was still on the rise in the towns of Sturovo and Komarno near the Hungarian border. The situation in Komarno was especially critical as several protective barriers started leaking and volunteers had arrived to reinforce them with sandbags.

In the Czech Republic, the waters were dropping further and clean-up work was under way. However, anti-flood measures were to remain in place as heavy rains and thunderstorms were forecast for the weekend.

Bangladesh: A once-fearsome cyclone that was threatening Bangladesh and Myanmar dissipated quickly, causing some deaths but largely relieving authorities who had told more than 1 million people to leave vulnerable coastal areas in preparation for a far worse storm.

Cyclone Mahasan lost power as it shed huge amounts of rain and then veered west of its predicted path, sparing major Bangladeshi population areas, including Chittagong and the seaside resort of Cox’s Bazar, said Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

Coastal areas were spared major damage because it hit Thursday afternoon during low tide, causing no major tidal surge, he said.

“Thank God we have been spared this time,” local government administrator Ruhul Amin said.

Before the storm threat weakened, Bangladesh had evacuated 1 million people, and the United Nations warned that 8.2 million people could face life-threatening conditions.

Myanmar was spared almost entirely. Evacuation attempts there had met with frustration as some of the tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people in western Rakhine state were wary about the government’s order and refused to leave.

“It’s all over, and we are very relieved that we didn’t have any unfortunate incident in Rakhine state due to the cyclone,” Win Myaing, Rakhine’s regional spokesman said.

In Cox’s Bazar, tens of thousands of people had fled shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, hotels, schools and government office buildings. But by Thursday afternoon, the sun was shining and Amin said he planned to close the shelters by the evening.

The storm’s slow movement toward Bangladesh gave the government plenty of warning to get people to safety, Amin said.

“But for the evacuation, the casualties would have been higher,” he said.

Ferry services in the delta nation resumed Thursday night after being suspended in advance of the cyclone. Scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal had been closed, and the military said it kept 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.

A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Myanmar’s southern delta was devastated by Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people. Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Mahasen, which hit land with maximum wind speeds of about 100 kph (62 mph) and quickly weakened, said Alam, the meteorological official.

“The latest data that we have today (Monday) showed that 20 people have been killed by the floods,” Nelis Zuliansri , spokesperson of the agency told Xinhua over phone. “They were killed by electricity shocks and being drawn,” she said.Lukman said that the floods have affected 249, 154 people.

The floods have been caused by a five-year cycle of monsoon rain, according to the meteorology and geophysics agency.The disaster paralyzed business and official activities in Jakarta on Thursday as it inundated business centers and government official buildings.Jakarta policymakers have declared an emergency status by up to Jan. 27.