Sunstroke claims three more lives in Tripura

Sunstroke has claimed three more lives in Tripura, taking the total number of people dying of excessive exposure to sun and heat to six in the state in the past one week, police said Wednesday.

"A woman and a youth died at Siddhi Ashram and Amtali towns, while a farmer died at Sabroom town due to sunstroke while they were working in paddy fields," a police official said in the Tripura capital Agartala.

The unusual intense heat wave continues across the entire northeastern region of the country, according to weather department officials in Agartala and Guwahati, the largest city of Assam.

They said that temperatures in most parts of the region were five-seven degrees Celsius above the average (30-31 degrees Celsius) for this time of the year.

The weather office added that the ongoing dry spell during the monsoon season (June-September) was an unusual phenomenon. There has been 30-40 percent deficit in rainfall in the region since the onset of monsoon in the first week of June, they said.

The deficit has caused uncomfortable hot weather conditions across the region.

"The seasonal development is attributed to a break in monsoonal rainfall. However, rains are likely to restart this weekend," an official of the Regional Meteorological Centre in Guwahati said.

He added that during the pre-monsoon period (March-June), the northeastern region had witnessed excess rainfall.