India's northern states face rain fury

TORRENTIAL rain is causing heavy damage in northern India, killing at least 10 people and leaving hundreds of pilgrims stranded in the Himalayas, officials said on Thursday.

A bout of intense rain lashed New Delhi on Wednesday evening, with 147 mm (5.8 inches) recorded in eastern parts of the city and its suburbs by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

At least five people died, according to local media.

Three people have died and parts of two bridges were washed away due to a cloudburst in Uttarakhand state, officials said, adding that bad weather in the hilly terrain was hampering communications. Earlier local media said four people were killed.

Three hundred pilgrims were stranded in different locations on the Kedarnath route - a trek to a Hindu pilgrimage site - and a patch of the national highway was washed out, district official Saurabh Gaharwar told Reuters by phone.

Uttarakhand, which is prone to flash floods and landslides, was ravaged by record rain in 2013, and nearly 6,000 of tens of thousands of Hindu devotees on pilgrimages went missing.

Cloudbursts in Himachal

In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state, two people died and nearly 50 people were missing following two separate incidents of cloudbursts, authorities said.

Many houses and roads got washed away and two hydro power projects got damaged.

Visuals shared by the state chief minister showed rescue workers crossing streams by rope, as muddy water gushed through rocks between hills.

"The situation is quite bad there and we are trying to pull out people, dead bodies (if any) from the debris," Jyoti Rana, a district official in the capital Shimla, told Reuters.

A cloudburst at Samagh Khud (nallah) in Rampur subdivision of Shimla district left two people dead and 28 others missing.

Another cloudburst in Thalatukhod area of Padhar in Mandi district on Wednesday night left one person dead and nine others missing.

Due to the torrential rains, Malana I and Malana II hydropower projects have suffered damage.

With the Beas River in spate, the Chandigarh-Manali National Highway got damaged in several places.

Torrential rains in the mountains of India and neighbouring Pakistan and Nepal over the past few years have been attributed to climate change by some experts. (Agencies)