Torrential rains have triggered flash floods in India and Pakistan, killing over 200 people and leaving many missing in the past 24 hours, officials said Friday, as rescuers evacuated about 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in both countries.
In Pakistan, a helicopter carrying relief supplies to the flood-hit northwestern Bajaur region crashed on Friday due to bad weather, killing all five people on board, including two pilots, a government statement said.
Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in India's Himalayan regions and Pakistan's northern areas, 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 because of climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.
Top leaders in both countries offered condolences to the victims' families and assured swift relief.
The floods and landslides were triggered by a sudden cloudburst over Chositi village, sweeping away homes and infrastructure. Disaster management official Mohammed Irshad said at least 300 people had been rescued, but an estimated 80 others remained missing late Thursday – a number likely to rise as authorities continue to verify reports.
Rescue operations were halted overnight because of dangerous conditions, with heavy rains and the threat of further flooding expected, officials said.
India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, warned that the catastrophe “could result in substantial” loss of life as the full scale of the disaster becomes clear.
Susheel Kumar Sharma, a local official, said at least 50 seriously injured people were being treated in local hospitals. Many were rescued from a stream filled with mud and debris.
Chositi is a remote Himalayan village in Kashmir’s Kishtwar district and is the last village accessible by motor vehicles on the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine at an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,500 feet). The shrine is about an 8-kilometer (5-mile) trek from the village.
Multiple pilgrims were feared to be among the victims. Officials said the pilgrimage had been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to strengthen relief efforts. The pilgrimage began July 25 and was scheduled to end Sept. 5.
The first responders to the disaster were villagers and local officials, who were later joined by police, disaster management personnel, and members of India’s military and paramilitary forces, Sharma said.
Abdul Majeed Bichoo, a local resident and social activist from a neighboring village, said he witnessed the bodies of eight people being pulled from under the mud. Three horses, buried alongside them in the debris, were “miraculously recovered alive,” he said.
The 75-year-old Bichoo described Chositi as “a sight of complete devastation from all sides” after the disaster.
“It was heartbreaking and an unbearable sight. I have not seen this kind of destruction of life and property in my life,” he said.
The floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for pilgrims, as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said. More than 200 pilgrims were in the kitchen when the tragedy struck. The flash floods also damaged and washed away many homes clustered in the foothills.
Photos and videos circulating on social media showed widespread destruction in the village, with vehicles overturned and homes reduced to rubble.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “the situation is being monitored closely” and offered prayers to “all those affected by the cloudburst and flooding.”
“Rescue and relief operations are underway. Every possible assistance will be provided to those in need,” he said in a social media post.
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. Experts say cloudbursts have become more frequent in recent years, partly because of climate change, while the damage they cause has increased due to unplanned development in mountain areas.
Kishtwar is home to several hydroelectric power projects, which experts have long warned pose a threat to the region’s fragile ecosystem.
