Flash floods in Kashmir kill at least 32, say Indian officials, with more still missing

At least 32 people are dead in flash floods caused by torrential rains in a remote, mountainous village in Indian-controlled Kashmir, a top disaster management official said Thursday.

Mohammed Irshad said rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village of Chositi brought at least 100 people to safety. He said initial estimations suggested at least 50 others were still missing.

India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, said the floods were triggered by a cloudburst in Jammu and Kashmir’s Chositi area and “could result in substantial casualty.”

Some of the rescued people were badly 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 has been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to the area.

The devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for the pilgrims as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said.

Lt.-Gov. Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir, offered condolences for the loss of life and said he had directed personnel from India’s military and paramilitary forces, as well as police and disaster management officials, to strengthen rescue and relief operations.

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.