The victims were atop a popular tourist attraction. A watchtower at the city’s 12 Century Amer Fort. They were taking selfies the when the deadly lightning strike occurred.
Lightning strikes have killed 40 people in 24 hours and around 2,000 people in India every year.
The following written content from Erez Linn
A lightning strike killed at least 16 people and injured dozens of others in northern India on Sunday, local media reported.
The incident reportedly took place in Jaipur, the capital of India’s Rajasthan state, when the victims were trying to take selfies on top of the city’s 12th Century Amer Fort, a popular tourist attraction, during a storm.
Dozens have also died in lightning strikes in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states.
A senior police officer told the BBC that most of the victims “were young.” Twenty-seven people were on the fort’s tower at the time of the incident and some jumped to the ground, the report said.
Sunday alone saw nine more deaths from lightning strikes across Rajasthan state alone, local media reported. Elsewhere in India, dozens of others were killed in a similar way.
The chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi have announced compensation for the families of those who died, the BBC said.
The Indian Meteorological Department has said that deaths by lightning strikes during monsoon season, which in India runs from June to September, have doubled since the 1960s. Read more from Hayom
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