HYDERABAD, India, June 23 (Reuters) - A ferocious storm in India's southern Andhra Pradesh state has killed at least 45 people and displaced tens of thousands, officials said on Saturday, sparking a major relief operation. "We have opened up 95 relief camps ... for 56,000 displaced people and also brought in 200 medical teams to contain the spread of water-related diseases," said Preeti Sudan, the state's disaster management commissioner. At least 45 people were reported dead and officials said many others, including fishermen out at sea, were missing after the tropical storm hit coastal regions of the state on Friday. Coastguard boats were looking for the missing fishermen, who went to sea despite weather warnings, and were distributing food, fresh water and medicine to a huge rural population, some stranded on the roofs of houses and buses or up trees. "I spent the night on my rooftop along with my family after flood water gushed into my house," said Musari Venkateswarlu, a school teacher in Guntur's Macherla town. Hundreds of trees were uprooted, electric poles felled and highways flooded as low-lying villages and small towns in the Kurnool and Guntur districts took the full force of the storm. More heavy rains were forecast for at least the next 24 hours, the director of a local cyclone warning centre said. The dead included 15 people swept away by a flash flood near a bridge construction site in Kurnool, 225 km (140 miles) southwest of the state capital, Hyderabad. About a dozen others were killed by lightning strikes. Storms and monsoon rains kill hundreds of people and force hundreds of thousands from their homes every year across India.
