Five European tourists, including three French nationals, were among 177 people killed in huge floods in the Himalayan region of Ladakh, an Indian official said yesterday.

Hundreds of people are also missing after sudden rains caused flash floods on Friday that swept away roads, houses, bridges and power cables.

“I can confirm to you that five foreign (European) tourists are among the dead,” Aamir Ali, a government disaster management official, said, adding the other two European victims were Spanish and Italian.

They are the first known European deaths in the disaster in the remote region popular as an adventure sports destination.

Other foreigners among the dead were 16 Nepali labourers and one Tibetan refugee.

Nearby Indian Kashmir is in the grip of a Muslim insurgency but Buddhist-dominated Ladakh with its mountains, rivers and monasteries has not been touched by unrest and is popular with tourists.

The announcement of the latest deaths came as soldiers and emergency relief teams sifted through flattened homes in the search for bodies in Leh, the region’s main town.

“Some 150 bodies have been identified and their cremation and burials are on,” a police officer in Leh said, asking not to be named. “We are taking photographs of 15 bodies which have not been identified to keep a record.”

The police officer said rescuers feared hundreds more people may have died after being swept away or buried by waves of rock and mud.

An army statement said work has focused on the swamped ­village of Choglamsar on the outskirts of Leh, but progress in recovering bodies has been slow.

Among those feared dead are 26 Indian soldiers stationed at a small army post on the de facto border with Pakistan.

The Indian air force has been flying in aid, doctors and engineers to Ladakh.

Officials in Srinagar, the ­summer capital of Indian Kashmir, said most of Leh’s electricity supply should be restored by the end of yesterday as the area struggles to get back to normality.