Death toll passes 1,400

Hospitals in India yesterday battled to treat victims of a blistering heatwave that has claimed nearly 1,500 lives in just over a week -- the highest number recorded in two decades.

Hundreds of mainly poor people die at the height of summer every year in India, but this year's figures are already the highest since 1995, when official data shows 1,677 people succumbed to the heat.

In southern Andhra Pradesh, by far the worst-hit state where top temperatures have reached 47 degrees Celsiusand 1,020 people have died since May 18, doctors said they had never seen so many severe cases.

"Our wards are completely full," said J V Subbarao, medical officer at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Medical Sciences in Andhra Pradesh.

"I have worked as a medical officer in this district for 40 years and I have never seen anything like this, with so many people arriving already dead."

Another 340 people have died from the heatwave in neighbouring Telangana state, where temperatures hit 48 degrees Celsius over the weekend.

Forecasters said there was little hope of any immediate respite from the temperatures in northern India. "We think that these heatwave conditions will take another four to five days to subside," said Brahma Prakash Yadav, director of the Indian Meteorological Department.

The Press Trust of India news agency reported 43 deaths in Orissa, and another 13 in West Bengal.

Two people died in western Maharashtra state.

Unconfirmed reports said two people had died in Delhi.

The monsoon is forecast to hit the southern state of Kerala on May 30 before sweeping across the country, but it will be weeks before the cooling rains reach India's arid plains.