Severe winds and rapid-fire lightning strikes from a violent dust storm demolished homes and displaced trees across India on Wednesday, killing at least 125 people and injuring more than 200 others – with more potentially deadly weather still to come, officials said. In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, the death toll stood at at least 73, with the vast majority of those deaths occurring in the city of Agra, where so far 43 have been confirmed dead. The city of Agra in Uttar Pradesh saw the highest fatalities with 36 people, including children, killed after the intense dust storm destroyed their homes on Wednesday, according to a Times of India report on Thursday. Most of the deaths occurred after walls and roofs of houses collapsed in the middle of the night," Jaipur District Divisional Commissioner T Ravi Kant said. “Many houses collapsed due to high intensity winds, or the trees fell over onto the houses,” Sanjay Kumar, the Uttar Pradesh’s state relief commissioner for the National Disaster Management Authority in India, told CNN, explaining how residents had become trapped and died. According to a PTI report, an Indian Meteorological Department official has predicted another dust storm in parts of Rajasthan and UP over the next two days. Dust storms have hit India in the past, but officials said what made this storm so deadly was the fallen debris. “It was a nightmare.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement Thursday that he was “saddened by the loss of lives” and that he has asked state governments to provide assistance to those who need it.
Around 110 people are killed in a dust storm in northwestern India, with Uttar Pradesh being the hardest hit.