Hasina’s ouster from power poses diplomatic dilemma for India

Hasina’s ouster from power poses diplomatic dilemma for India
In this handout photograph taken and released on July 25, 2024 by Bangladesh Prime Minister's Office, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina addresses the media at a vandalized metro station in Mirpur, after the anti-quota protests. (AFP)
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Updated 10 August 2024
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Hasina’s ouster from power poses diplomatic dilemma for India

Hasina’s ouster from power poses diplomatic dilemma for India
  • Hasina, 76, quit as prime minister in the face of a student-led uprising on Monday and fled to longtime ally India
  • With Hasina’s rivals in control of Bangladesh now, India’s support for the old government has come back to bite

NEW DELHI: The ouster of Bangladesh’s autocratic premier sparked celebrations in Dhaka this week but alarm in neighboring India, which backed Sheikh Hasina to counter rival China and quash Islamist alternatives, analysts say.
It has created a diplomatic dilemma for the regional powerhouse.
Hasina, 76, quit as prime minister in the face of a student-led uprising on Monday and fled by helicopter to longtime ally New Delhi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to offer his “best wishes” after Bangladesh’s newly sworn-in interim leader Muhammad Yunus took power Thursday, saying New Delhi was “committed” to working with Dhaka.
But China was also swift to welcome Dhaka’s new authorities, saying it “attaches importance to the development” of relations.
With Hasina’s rivals in control in Dhaka, India’s support for the old government has come back to bite.
“From the point of view of Bangladeshis, India has been on the wrong side for a couple of years now,” said International Crisis Group analyst Thomas Kean.
“The Indian government absolutely did not want to see a change in Dhaka, and had made that very clear for years that they didn’t see any alternative to Hasina and the Awami League.”
Bangladesh is almost entirely encircled by India, with a deeply intertwined history long before they were partitioned out of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.
But while India’s 1.4 billion population and dominating economy overshadows Bangladesh — with a population of 170 million — Hasina also courted China.
India and China, the world’s two most populous nations, are intense rivals competing for strategic influence across South Asia, including in Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
Hasina pursued a delicate balancing act, benefiting from support from New Delhi, while maintaining strong relations with Beijing.
New Delhi saw a common threat in groups Hasina viewed as rivals and crushed with brutal force, including the key Bangladesh National Party (BNP).
“India... worried that any alternative to Hasina and the Awami League could be detrimental to Indian interests,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center.
“In New Delhi’s view, the BNP and its allies are dangerous Islamist forces that could imperil Indian interests.”
Yunus has said he wants elections in Bangladesh “within a few months.”
The BNP could be poised for a comeback, holding a mass rally in Dhaka this week.
In the immediate aftermath of Hasina’s fall, some businesses and homes owned by Hindus were attacked, a group seen by some in Muslim-majority Bangladesh as having been her supporters.
Hundreds of Bangladeshi Hindus this week arrived on India’s border, asking to cross.
Hindu nationalist leader Modi on Thursday said he hoped “for an early return to normalcy, ensuring the safety and protection of Hindus and all other minority communities.”
The fact Hasina is sheltering in India may prove to be a stumbling block to relations between New Delhi and Dhaka.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament Hasina had flown to India “at very short notice,” and according to Indian media, intended to stay only briefly in transit.
But her reported bid to travel onwards to Britain was scuppered after London called for a “full and independent UN-led investigation” into the deadly crackdown on protests in the last weeks of her rule.
The United States in the past had praised Hasina’s economic track record and saw her as a partner on priorities such as countering Islamist extremism, but Washington more recently imposed visa sanctions over concerns about democracy.
It is not clear how long she will now stay in India, or where else she might go.
Since arriving at military air base near New Delhi, she has been hosted in a secret safe house and not spoken publically.
Her daughter Saima Wazed said she was “heartbroken” she could not see her mother.
“As much as I would love to see Ma, I don’t want to compromise her whereabouts in any way,” Wazed, the World Health Organization’s Southeast Asia chief, said in a since-deleted post on social media platform X.
Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy told the Times of India newspaper his mother still hoped to contest for political office.
“She will go back to Bangladesh the moment the interim government decides to hold an election,” he said.
Indian media warn of the “formidable diplomatic challenge” the country now faces.
“New Delhi must actively work to limit the damage, and ensure the high stakes in the relationship are protected,” the Indian Express newspaper warned. “This could involve some near-term setbacks.”
But Bangladesh’s new leader Yunus has offered an olive branch.
“Although some countries, such as India, backed the ousted prime minister and earned the enmity of the Bangladeshi people as a result, there will be many opportunities to heal these kinds of rifts,” Yunus wrote in The Economist, shortly before returning to Bangladesh.
Crisis Group’s Kean meanwhile said he believes the nations will put the past aside for pragmatic relations.
“India is Bangladesh’s most important international partner, and there’s no reason that they can’t find a way to move forward from this,” said Kean.
“Economic forces will compel them to work together.”


Two killed fighting wildfire in Greece

Two killed fighting wildfire in Greece
Updated 12 sec ago
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Two killed fighting wildfire in Greece

Two killed fighting wildfire in Greece
  • Anastasios Giolis, the deputy governor of Corinth, told public broadcaster ERT that two men were killed fighting the flames, calling it a “tragic accident”
ATHENS: A forest fire in central Greece has killed two men who were helping firefighters tackle the blaze, authorities said Monday.
The fire near Corinth, 140 kilometers (87 miles) west of Athens, has forced several villages to evacuate.
Anastasios Giolis, the deputy governor of Corinth, told public broadcaster ERT that two men were killed fighting the flames, calling it a “tragic accident.”
The men’s charred bodies were found near the village of Ellinikon, according to media reports.
Two firefighters were slightly injured, fire services told AFP.
The fire broke out on Sunday and spread rapidly due to strong winds, making it “difficult to control,” the fire services said.
Five localities near the fire were told to evacuate, including Pyrgos, Elliniko and Kallithea.
Fifteen vehicles, seven water bombers and three helicopters were deployed to fight the blaze on Sunday, according to the fire brigade.
Numerous regions of Greece were placed under an orange fire alert on Sunday and Monday due to winds reaching speeds of 50 to 75 kilometers an hour.
The summer wildfire season in Greece this year has seen daily blazes after the Mediterranean country recorded its warmest winter and the hottest June and July since reliable data collection began in 1960.
In August, a massive blaze near Marathon, 40 kilometers northeast of Athens, killed one person and forced thousands to flee their homes.

India has silenced dissenting voices, says top Kashmiri leader as region votes

India has silenced dissenting voices, says top Kashmiri leader as region votes
Updated 9 min 56 sec ago
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India has silenced dissenting voices, says top Kashmiri leader as region votes

India has silenced dissenting voices, says top Kashmiri leader as region votes
  • Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has spent most of the last five years under house detention in Jammu and Kashmir 
  • Previous elections in the region have been marred by violence, boycotts and vote-rigging allegations 

SRINAGAR: Ahead of the final phase of a local election in Indian-controlled Kashmir, a key resistance leader says the regional polls to choose a local government will not resolve the decades-old conflict that is at the heart of a dispute between New Delhi and Pakistan.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who has spent most of the last five years under house detention, said the polls are being held as political voices contesting India’s sovereignty over the region remain silenced after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government stripped the region of its long-held semi-autonomy in 2019.

The detained leader said in a phone interview with The Associated Press that the election, touted by the Modi government as a “festival of democracy” in the region, cannot be an alternative to resolving the dispute.

“These elections cannot be the means to address the larger Kashmir issue,” said Mirwaiz, who is also an influential Muslim cleric and custodian of the six-century-old grand mosque in the region’s main Srinagar city, the urban heartland of anti-India sentiment.

The multistage election, the last phase of which is being held Tuesday, will allow Kashmir to have its own truncated government and a regional legislature with limited powers. It is the first such vote in a decade and the first since 2019, when New Delhi downgraded and divided the former state into two centrally governed union territories — Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir — both ruled directly by New Delhi through unelected bureaucrats.

Authorities have said the election will bring democracy to the region after more than three decades of strife, but many locals see the vote as an opportunity not only to elect their own representatives but also to register their protest against the 2019 changes they fear could dilute the region’s demographics.

India’s clampdown following the 2019 move “has silenced people” in the region who “feel dispossessed and disempowered,” Mirwaiz said.

“You may not see active turmoil like before 2019 but there is a strong, latent public resistance to all this,” he said. “We have been forcibly silenced, but silence is not agreement.”

India’s sudden move, which largely resonated in India and among Modi supporters, was mostly opposed in Kashmir as an assault on its identity and autonomy. Fearing unrest, authorities detained Mirwaiz and thousands of other political activists, including Kashmiri pro-India leaders who objected to India’s move, amid an unprecedented security clampdown and a total communication blackout in the region.

The region has since been on edge, with civil liberties curbed and media gagged.

Mirwaiz heads the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella grouping that espouses the right to self-determination for the entire region, which is divided between India and Pakistan.
According to Mirwaiz, the crackdown has restricted his group’s access to people and shrunk its “space and scope for proactive involvement” like before.

“The massive assault has considerably weakened the organizational strength of the Hurriyat, but not its resolve,” he said.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, and both countries control parts of the Himalayan territory divided by a heavily militarized frontier. After their first war in 1947, a United Nations referendum a year later gave Kashmir the choice of joining either Pakistan or India, but it never happened. The part of Kashmir controlled by India was granted semi-autonomy and special privileges in exchange for accepting Indian rule.

However, Kashmiri discontent with India soon began taking root as successive Indian governments started chipping away at that pact. Local governments were toppled and largely peaceful anti-India movements were harshly suppressed.

In the mid-1980s, an election that was widely believed to have been rigged led to public backlash and an armed uprising. Since then, rebels have been fighting in the Indian-controlled part for a united Kashmir, either under Pakistani rule or independent of both.

Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal. India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.

Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Mirwaiz’s group believes only talks between India, Pakistan and the region’s people can end the conflict. In the past, he has held several rounds of talks with both New Delhi and Islamabad leaders, including their heads of government. However, under Modi, India has shifted its Kashmir policy and stopped engaging with the region’s pro-freedom leaders, including Mirwaiz.

Previous elections in the region have been marred by violence, boycotts and vote-rigging, even though India called them a victory over separatism. This time, the pro-freedom groups, largely incapacitated with most of their leaders jailed, have issued no calls for boycotts.

They also did not boycott India’s recent general election. Instead, some lower-ranking activists, who in the past dismissed voting as illegitimate under military occupation, are running for office as independent candidates.

“Boycott was the democratic means to express anger, reject this projection and draw attention toward the unsolved issue (of Kashmir),” Mirwaiz said. But India’s crackdown has left people “powerless and disempowered” and in such a scenario a “poll boycott cannot work anymore.”

Mirwaiz has distanced himself from the election, but said it had been engineered in favor of Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics before it started on Sept. 18.

He cited the government’s July amendment to legislation that gives sweeping executive powers to the federally appointed administrator even after a new local government comes to power in the region. He also referred to the redrawing of assembly districts in 2022 as “electoral gerrymandering,” an act that gave more electoral representation to the Hindu-dominated Jammu areas over the region’s overwhelmingly Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley.

Mirwaiz, however, hoped Kashmiri groups, including pro-India parties, would jointly seek a resolution of the conflict. He expressed his willingness to engage in talks with India but warned that the election should not be seen as public acceptance of New Delhi’s changes in the region.

Public participation in the election, Mirwaiz said, “is a release of their pent-up emotions and a means to oppose these disempowering and dispossessing measures, besides hoping to get some relief and redressal for their bread and butter issues.”
 


Israel-UN relations sink to new depths

Israel-UN relations sink to new depths
Updated 20 min 50 sec ago
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Israel-UN relations sink to new depths

Israel-UN relations sink to new depths
  • The past year has seen repeated accusations from within the UN system that Israel is committing “genocide” in its war in Gaza

Geneva: Israel’s long-contentious relationship with the United Nations has since October 7 spiralled to new depths, amid insults and accusations and even a questioning of the country’s continued UN membership.
Addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the world body of treating his country unfairly.
“Until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” he thundered.
The past year has seen repeated accusations from within the UN system that Israel is committing “genocide” in its war in Gaza, while Israeli officials have made charges of bias and have even accused the UN chief of being “an accomplice to terror.”
The heat has been turned way up in a war of words that has raged between Israel and various UN bodies for decades.
And temperatures have risen further in recent days amid Israel’s escalating strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“There has been a great deterioration” in the relationship, said Cyrus Schayegh, an international history and politics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
“It has gone from fairly bad to really bad.”
Since Hamas’s deadly attack inside Israel nearly a year ago, UN-linked courts, councils, agencies and staff have unleashed a barrage of condemnation and criticism of Israel’s devastating retaliatory operation in Gaza.
“We feel the UN has betrayed Israel,” the country’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva Daniel Meron told AFP.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 41,500 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Israel has especially taken aim at UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, but its ire has been felt across the UN system, and up to the UN chief.
Israeli calls for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to resign began just weeks after October 7, when he asserted that the attack “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
Even before October 7, Israel complained of UN bias, pointing for instance to the towering number of resolutions targeting the country.
Since the creation of the UN Human Rights Council in 2006, more than a third of the over 300 condemnatory resolutions have targeted Israel, Meron pointed out, describing this as “mind-boggling.”
Critics meanwhile highlight that from the time a General Assembly vote paved the way for Israel’s establishment in 1948, the country has ignored numerous UN resolutions and international court rulings, without consequences.
Israel has always snubbed resolution 194, which guarantees the Palestinians expelled in 1948 from the territory Israel conquered the right to return or to compensation.
It has also ignored rulings condemning its forceful acquisition of territory and the annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and the continuing and expanding settlement policy in the West Bank, among others.
By allowing Israel to remain in “non-compliance with international law, the West has been basically making the Israelis believe that they are above international law,” Geneva Graduate Institute political sociology professor Riccardo Bocco told AFP.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN rights office, also said a lack of accountability in the Middle East crisis appeared to have made “the parties to the conflict more brazen.”
“We rang the alarm bells multiple times and now there is the impression that impunity reigns,” she told AFP, lamenting increasing attacks on UN bodies and staff expressing concern over the situation.
“This is unacceptable.”
UNRWA has faced the harshest attacks.
It saw a series of funding cuts after Israel accused more than a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack.
Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini has accused Israel of conducting “a concerted effort to dismantle UNRWA,” which has suffered dramatic human and material losses in Gaza, with more than 220 staff killed.
Netanyahu demanded earlier this year that UNRWA, which he said “perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem (and) whose schools indoctrinate Palestinian children with genocide and terror ... be replaced by responsible aid agencies.”
Francesca Albanese, the UN independent rights expert on the Palestinian territories, who has faced harsh criticism and calls for her ousting from Israel amid her repeated accusation it is committing “genocide” in Gaza, recently suggested the country was becoming a “pariah.”
“Should there be a consideration of its membership as part of this organization, which Israel seems to have zero respect for?” she rhetorically asked journalists last week.
Meron slammed Albanese as “anti-Semitic and really an embarrassment to the UN.”
Other experts warned that Israel’s disregard for the UN was threatening the broader respect for the organization.
Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN expert on the right to drinking water, warned of the consequences when UN bodies “make decisions and nothing is respected.”
“We are blowing up the United Nations if we don’t react.”


Supplies are rushed to North Carolina communities left isolated after Helene

Supplies are rushed to North Carolina communities left isolated after Helene
Updated 31 min 26 sec ago
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Supplies are rushed to North Carolina communities left isolated after Helene

Supplies are rushed to North Carolina communities left isolated after Helene

PERRY: North Carolina officials pledged to get more water and other supplies to flood-stricken areas by Monday after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction across the US Southeast and the death toll from the storm rose to nearly 100.
At least 91 people across several states were killed. A North Carolina county that includes the mountain city of Asheville reported 30 people killed.
Gov. Roy Cooper predicted the toll would rise as rescuers and other emergency workers reached areas isolated by collapsed roads, failing infrastructure and widespread flooding.
Supplies were being airlifted to the region around the isolated city of Asheville. Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder pledged that she would have food and water to the city by Monday.
“We hear you. We need food and we need water,” Pinder said on a Sunday call with reporters. “My staff has been making every request possible to the state for support and we’ve been working with every single organization that has reached out. What I promise you is that we are very close.”
Officials warned that rebuilding from the widespread loss of homes and property would be lengthy and difficult. The storm upended life throughout the Southeast. Deaths also were reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia.
Cooper implored residents in western North Carolina to avoid travel, both for their own safety and to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles. More than 50 search teams spread throughout the region in search of stranded people.
One rescue effort involved saving 41 people north of Asheville. Another mission focused on saving a single infant. The teams found people through both 911 calls and social media messages, North Carolina National Guard Adjutant General Todd Hunt said.
President Joe Biden described the impact of the storm as “stunning” and said he would visit the area this week as long as it does not disrupt rescues or recovery work.
In a brief exchange with reporters, he described the impact of the storm as “stunning” and said that the administration is giving states “everything we have” to help with their response to the storm.
Hurricane Helene roared ashore late Thursday in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph (225 kph) winds. A weakened Helene quickly moved through Georgia, then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains that flooded creeks and rivers and strained dams.
There have been hundreds of water rescues, including in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop Friday.
More than 2 million homeowners and other utility customers were still without power Sunday night. South Carolina had the most outages and Gov. Henry McMaster asked for patience as crews dealt with widespread snapped power poles.
“We want people to remain calm. Help is on the way, it is just going to take time,” McMaster told reporters outside the airport in Aiken County.
Begging for help in North Carolina as that help is slow to arrive
The storm unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. One community, Spruce Pine, was doused with over 2 feet (61 centimeters) of rain from Tuesday through Saturday.
Jessica Drye Turner in Texas had begged for someone to rescue her family members stranded on their rooftop in Asheville amid rising floodwaters. “They are watching 18-wheelers and cars floating by,” Turner wrote in an urgent Facebook post on Friday.
But in a follow-up message Saturday, Turner said help had not arrived in time to save her parents, both in their 70s, and her 6-year-old nephew. The roof collapsed and the three drowned.
“I cannot convey in words the sorrow, heartbreak and devastation my sisters and I are going through,” she wrote.
The state was sending water supplies and other items toward Buncombe County and Asheville, but mudslides blocking Interstate 40 and other highways prevented supplies from making it. The county’s own water supplies were on the other side of the Swannanoa River, away from where most of the 270,000 people in Buncombe County live, officials said.
Law enforcement was making plans to send officers to places that still had water, food or gas because of reports of arguments and threats of violence, the county sheriff said.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell toured south Georgia on Sunday and planned to be in North Carolina Monday.
“It’s still very much an active search and rescue mission” in western North Carolina, Criswell said. “And we know that there’s many communities that are cut off just because of the geography” of the mountains, where damage to roads and bridges have cut off certain areas.
Biden on Saturday pledged federal government help for Helene’s “overwhelming” devastation. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina, making federal funding available for affected individuals.
Storm-battered Florida digs out, residents gather for church
In Florida’s Big Bend, some lost nearly everything they own. With sanctuaries still darkened as of Sunday morning, some churches canceled regular services while others like Faith Baptist Church in Perry opted to worship outside.
Standing water and tree debris still covers the grounds of Faith Baptist Church. The church called on parishioners to come “pray for our community” in a message posted to the congregation’s Facebook page.
“We have power. We don’t have electricity,” Immaculate Conception Catholic Church parishioner Marie Ruttinger said. “Our God has power. That’s for sure.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it looked “like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air.
In eastern Georgia near the border with South Carolina, officials notified Augusta residents Sunday morning that water service would be shut off for 24 to 48 hours in the city and surrounding Richmond County.
A news release said trash and debris from the storm “blocked our ability to pump water.” Officials were distributing bottled water.
With at least 25 killed in South Carolina, Helene was the deadliest tropical cyclone for the state since Hurricane Hugo made landfall north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people.
Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.
Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes within hours.
New tropical depression in Atlantic could become strong hurricane, forecasters say
A new tropical depression in the eastern Atlantic Ocean could become a “formidable hurricane” later this week, the National Hurricane Center said Sunday. The depression had sustained 35 mph (55kph) winds and was located about 630 miles (1,015 kilometers) west-southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands, the center said. It could become a hurricane by Wednesday.


Death toll soars to 93 in US from storm Helene, North Carolina reeling

Death toll soars to 93 in US from storm Helene, North Carolina reeling
Updated 30 September 2024
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Death toll soars to 93 in US from storm Helene, North Carolina reeling

Death toll soars to 93 in US from storm Helene, North Carolina reeling
  • Helene blew into Florida’s northern Gulf shore as a huge Category Four hurricane with winds of 225 kph
  • High winds and torrential rain pummeled towns and cities across five southeastern states, causing massive destruction

VALDOSTA, United States: The death toll from powerful storm Helene jumped to at least 93 on Sunday, with one county in North Carolina alone reporting 30 deaths, authorities said, as rescuers battled to reach people in need across the southeastern United States.
The storm response took on a political tinge after President Joe Biden and the two candidates vying to replace him, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, announced plans to soon visit hard-hit areas, some of them in key battleground states in the November election.
High winds and torrential rain pummeled towns and cities across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Homes were destroyed, roads flooded out and power cut off to millions.
“We’re hearing (of) significant infrastructure damage to water systems, communication, roads, critical transportation routes, as well as several homes that have been just destroyed by this,” the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Deanne Criswell, said Sunday.
At least 93 people were killed in the extreme weather — 37 in North Carolina, 25 in South Carolina, 17 in Georgia, 11 in Florida, two in Tennessee and one in Virginia, according to tallies from local authorities compiled by AFP. That total was expected to rise.
“We have another devastating update. We now have 30 confirmed losses due to the storm,” Quentin Miller, the sheriff in North Carolina’s Buncombe County, which includes the tourist city of Asheville, told a briefing.
Flood warnings remained in effect in parts of western North Carolina, amid fears of potential dam failures.
Conditions were expected to improve in the affected areas by around Tuesday, National Weather Service director Ken Graham said.
Nearly 2.2 million households remained without power on Sunday, according to tracker poweroutage.us.
US Department of Energy official Matt Targuagno said that crews were working hard to restore electricity but warned it would be “a complex, multi-day response.”
Thousands of people continued to seek assistance in shelters run by the American Red Cross, organization official Jennifer Pipa said.

Helene blew into Florida’s northern Gulf shore as a huge Category Four hurricane with winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour.
Even as it weakened, it wreaked havoc.
North Carolina saw some of the worst of the flooding, with Governor Roy Cooper saying rescuers were being forced to airlift supplies in some areas due to damaged or flooded roads.
“I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides that they are experiencing right now,” Criswell said on CBS, adding that more search and rescue teams were being deployed.
William Ray, director of the state’s emergency management department, warned that conditions were still extremely dangerous.
Hundreds of roads across the region remained closed, with several bridges washed away by floodwaters.
Four major interstate highways were closed across North Carolina and Tennessee, with “multiple” bridges still out, said Kristin White of the US Department of Transportation.
Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina each had more than 100 road closures, she added.
In the Georgia city of Valdosta, the storm ripped the roofs off buildings, and left road intersections a tangle of felled utility poles and trees.
“The wind started really hitting, like, felt branches and pieces of the roof hitting the side of the building and hitting the windows,” said Valdosta resident Steven Mauro.
“And then we were looking out and then literally this whole street, just everything went black.”
Trump, the Republican former president seeking another term, will visit Valdosta on Monday for a briefing on the disaster, his campaign said.
Biden, who has approved federal aid for several states in the wake of the disaster, intends to travel to hard-hit areas this week, “as soon as it will not disrupt emergency response operations,” the White House said Sunday, later adding that Harris would do the same.
“We will stand with these communities for as long as it takes to make sure that they are able to recover and rebuild,” Harris said Sunday evening at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.
Biden was scheduled to speak about the post-storm response from the White House on Monday.