18 patients die in India hospital as floods cut off power

Two Naval vessels INS Shakti and INS Shyadhri arrived Chennai on Friday with relief materials, while limited air services were offered from the naval airbase at INS Rajali at Arakkonam, some 85 km west of Chennai. "I am confident that normalcy will return to your state in the near future under your leadership", he wrote.

A team of Singapore Red Cross volunteers will be deployed to help distribute the relief items. With no electricity for more than four days, they had no way to charge cellphones, they said.

Chennai's new global airport was flooded after Tuesday's historic downpour.

Private airlines have also joined the rescue operations in rain-battered Chennai, with some of the carriers today flying out hundreds of people from here to Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

More than a million people have been affected by the heaviest rainfall in the state in over a century with the Indian Meteorological Department on Thursday predicting three more days of torrential rains. However, intermittent rains and an overcast sky kept the people on their tenterhooks while waters receded in a number of areas.

At Chennai's Tambaram Air Force Station soldiers load food supplies onto a chopper in advance of air-drop on Friday

The central and state governments are actively involved in rescue and relief operations and the national disaster response teams along with the Army continue to be engaged in rescue and relief operations.

At least a 120,000 people have been rescued from the floods that have covered parts of southern India. The relief cargo was dispatched by two ICG vessels Samrat and Samudra Prahari which picked it up from the Mormugao Port Trust facility in Goa, while on its journey from Mumbai to Chennai, where they had been dispatched to join the relief and rescue operations.

Much to the aid of passengers caught right here resulting from cancelled flights and trains, the Chennai airport started working flights on the home routes in day time. "Some have old parents, they don't want to take a chance", she said, with many too scared to wade through floodwaters. The hospital's back-up power system also failed. The relief measures would be on till December 15, it said. Thousands of rescuers raced to evacuate residents from deadly flooding, as India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to the southern state of Tamil Nadu to survey the devastation.

He was pictured standing next to an upside-down Indian flag but later official postings of the same image shows the flag the right side up.

Some experts have opined that Chennai being one of the outsourcing hub of India and a major destination of foreign investment, the current disastrous situation could also affect the national economy. Stating that the team was fully geared up to tackle flooding in Chennai, after Jammu and Kashmir previous year, the DG said, "Of course, there are many lessons to be learnt".