India clears toxic waste 40 years after Bhopal gas disaster 

NEW DELHI, Jan 2: Indian authorities moved hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste remaining more than 40 years after the world's deadliest industrial disaster struck the city of Bhopal, media reported Thursday.

Communities have for decades blamed a high level of sicknesses on contamination of the groundwater in the wake of the highly toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in December 1984.

Some 3,500 people were killed in the immediate aftermath of the chemical leak on the night of December 2, 1984, and up to 25,000 are estimated to have died overall.
Around a dozen trucks began carrying the 337 tonnes of waste -- sealed inside containers and with a police escort--- in a slow convoy to the disposal site some 225 kilometres (140 miles) away at Pithampur late Wednesday night, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.    —AFP