Floods kill 132 in Kashmir, hundreds reported missing

Rescuers waded through mud to seek survivors yesterday after floods caused by freak rains killed 132 people and left hundreds missing in a part of Indian Kashmir popular for adventure sports.

Over 250 people were missing, police said, after floodwaters left a trail of destruction in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, flattening buildings, overturning vehicles, toppling utility poles and leaving a sea of mud.

“We have at least 132 people dead and over 250 people missing,” a senior police official said, asking not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media. India’s NDTV reported that at least 400 people were missing.

The police official said that over 150 people were missing in Choglumsar, the worst-hit village on the outskirts of Leh, the main town in the majority Buddhist area.

Rescuers were also looking for more than 100 labourers missing from Shyong village, he said.

Thousands of Indian soldiers, Buddhist monks, and tourists who had travelled to the area for white-water rafting and other adventure sports joined rescue efforts, bringing out dead and injured from the rubble.

At least 400 people were reported injured in the floods, triggered by a cloudburst which struck without warning in the region which shares a sensitive border with China and has a large Indian military presence.

Thousands more were left homeless in the disaster, which came as India’s neighbour Pakistan was swamped by its worst floods in 80 years.

Indian air force planes made five sorties, flying in medicines, doctors and food for victims of the devastation, an official spokesman said.

A powerful two-metre wall of water, mud and sand smashed into the area as people slept early last Friday, making it look “like it was bombed,” RS Raina, who works for state broadcaster Doordarshan in Leh, told AFP.

Shops in a newly built market in Leh, the main town in the majority Buddhist Ladakh area, were transformed into temporary mortuaries where rescuers laid out bodies.

“Unclaimed bodies are piling and it is becoming a major problem to preserve them,” a police officer said.

“Those bodies which are claimed are immediately cremated or buried.”

Rescuers waded through knee-deep mud in a bid to reach victims trapped in collapsed buildings.

“Our immediate priority is to look for survivors,” said state tourism minister Nawang Rigzin Jora, who was directing rescue efforts in Leh.

The mountainous area in the southeastern part of Muslim-majority Kashmir is a favourite destination for foreign adventure tourists.

Farooq Shah, the region’s director of tourism, said only one foreign tourist was known to have been injured and was out of danger.

But he said the situation would become clearer in a day or two as some tourists had travelled to remote villages now cut off by the devastation.

Up to 3,000 tourists, including foreigners, were staying in Leh but none of the major hotels suffered serious damage, Leh tourism official Nissar Hussain said.

Private airlines also resumed operations, allowing some tourists to leave.

Leh lies 3,500 metres above sea level and is in a usually arid part of Indian Kashmir where heavy rainfall is uncommon.

Some 25 soldiers were missing after the floods washed away several army posts, said army spokesman Sitanshu Kar.

Civilian doctors were operating in the main army hospital as the Leh Civil Hospital “has been filled with mud,” Kar said.

Meanwhile, to the north, another cloudburst struck Kupwara district bordering Pakistani Kashmir late Friday, causing flooding and a “huge loss of property but no casualties,” a police statement said.