Dozens of bodies believed to be Covid-19 victims have washed up on the banks of the Ganges river in northern India, officials said.

Local official Ashok Kumar said that about 40 corpses washed up in Buxar district near the border between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, two of India's poorest states.

“We have directed concerned officials to dispose of all bodies, to either bury or cremate them,” Kumar told AFP. Some media reports said the number of corpses could be as high as 100.

The reports quoted other officials as saying some of them were bloated and partially burned and could have been in the river for several days. Locals told AFP that they believed the bodies had been dumped in the river because cremation sites were overwhelmed or because relatives could not afford wood for funeral pyres.