SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Flash floods caused by torrential rains in a remote village in Indian-controlled Kashmir have left at least 37 people dead, authorities said Thursday, as rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village brought at least 150 people to safety.
Following a cloudburst in the region’s Chositi village, which triggered floods and landslides, disaster management official Mohammed Irshad estimated that at least 50 people were still missing.
India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, warned that the disaster “could result in substantial casualty.”
At least 50 among the rescued people, many of whom were brought from a stream under mud and debris, were seriously injured and were being treated in local hospitals, said Susheel Kumar Sharma, a local official.
Chositi is a remote Himalayan village in Kashmir’s Kishtwar district and is the last village accessible to motor vehicles on the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine. Multiple pilgrims were also feared to be affected by the disaster. Officials said pilgrimage had been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to the area to strengthen rescue and relief operations.
The first responders to the disaster were villagers and local officials who were later joined by police and disaster management officials, as well as personnel from India’s military and paramilitary forces, Sharma said.
The devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for the pilgrims as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said. They added that over 200 pilgrims were in the kitchen when the tragedy struck. The flash floods also damaged and washed away many homes, clustered together in the foothills.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “the situation is being monitored closely” and offered his prayers to “all those affected by the cloudburst and flooding.”
“Rescue and relief operations are underway. Every possible assistance will be provided to those in need,” he said in a social media post.
Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in India’s Himalayan regions, which are prone to flash floods and landslides. Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, impacting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.
Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years partly due to climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.
Kishtwar is home to multiple hydroelectric power projects, which experts have long warned pose a threat to the region's fragile ecosystem.
