- Tuesday, April 16, 2024
By: Pramod Kumar
AT LEAST 12 people are feared dead and seven missing in flash floods triggered by heavy rains in northern India.
Himachal Pradesh state disaster management director Sudesh Kumar Mokhta on Wednesday (28) said four people are feared dead in the Kullu district and one person is feared dead in Chamba. Three people were killed and seven are missing in Lahaul-Spiti, officials said.
There were also reports that dozens of villagers were missing in Indian-ruled Kashmir after flash floods destroyed their houses, killing at least four people.
In Lahaul’s Udaipur, two tents of labourers and a private JCB were washed away in the flash floods triggered by a cloudburst around 8 pm on Tuesday, Mokhta said.
He said police and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) teams were dispatched to search for the missing people but the heavy flow of water hampered the search operation on Tuesday (27) night. The search operation resumed on Wednesday morning.
More than 160 people have died in India during the past week as a result of heavy rains.
The army and State Disaster Response Force have joined the search, federal minister Jitendra Singh said on Twitter, with some 36 people unaccounted for after the torrents of water swept down a narrow valley in the Kishtwar district of Kashmir.
Hilly areas in northern India like Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are likely to receive heavy to very heavy rainfall this week, the India Meteorological Department said.
According to reports, several roads have been blocked and around 60 vehicles are stranded due to multiple landslides in Himachal’s Lahaul-Spiti. Many roads in various other parts of the state have been blocked due to landslides.
