Shocking drone footage shows a mass burial site of hundreds of COVID-19 victims on the banks of India's Ganges River

• New drone footage, shot by Reuters, shows hundreds of bodies buried in the banks of the Ganges River in India.
• The country's hospitals and crematoriums have been struggling amid a deadly second COVID-19 wave.
• The river is seen as a viable alternative for Indian funeral rites as its believed to have purifying powers.

Shocking drone footage shows hundreds of burial sites scattered along the Ganges River in India as the second coronavirus wave continues to wreak havoc in the country.

In recent days, the bodies of people who are believed to have mostly died from COVID-19, have been found either floating in the river or buried in the sand of its banks.

Those who live close to the sites, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, speculate that families are burying their loved ones by the river either because there isn't enough space in local crematoriums or because they couldn't afford to buy wood to make funeral pyres, Al Jazeera News reported earlier this week.

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The river's waters are believed to have purifying powers.

-Sky News (@SkyNews) May 22, 2021

"We are living in horror. Dogs are devouring the bodies and dropping their bones and flesh in our residential premises. And the government is not doing anything," one local resident told the Telegraph.

The number of bodies found in and along the banks of the river is unconfirmed, as the local authorities have not made a tally public.

"On an average 40 bodies were brought here every day and either buried or abandoned here," another local living in Dongri village told the Telegraph. "Covid deaths have horrified us. We don't know who will claim or count these bodies."

India is still in the midst of a devastating second coronavirus wave. It has reported more than 26 million cases and more than 295,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to a tracker by Johns Hopkins University. But experts fear the actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher.