VARANASI, India — About 3,000 people were evacuated in India’s remote northeast after a lake created by an earlier landslide threatened to collapse and flood their villages, even as floodwater levels stabilized in the worst-hit areas of the north, officials said Friday.
Rakesh Ranjan, a National Disaster Response Force official, said the villagers were rescued this week in the mountainous Mangan district of Sikkim state.
Elsewhere, misery eased somewhat, with rains ebbing over the past three days in Uttar Pradesh state, where 200,000 people had moved to relief centers after their homes were submerged, said Deepak Singhal, a state official.
Air force helicopters dropped food packets to thousands of people in Allahabad district who preferred to stay on the top floors of their flooded homes and wait for the water to recede rather than move into state-run relief camps, officials said.
Drowning, electrocution or injuries from collapsed houses have killed at least 175 people.
The flooding has kept away thousands of pilgrims who usually line up at the ghats, or steps, leading to the Ganges River in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh for holy dips. The ghats have been submerged by the flood waters.