SRINAGAR, India: Flash floods caused by torrential rains in a remote village in India-controlled Kashmir have left at least 44 people dead and dozens missing, authorities said Thursday, as rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village brought at least 200 people to safety.
Following a cloudburst in the region’s Chositi village, which triggered floods and landslides, disaster management official Mohammed Irshad estimated that at least 50 people were still missing, with many believed to have been washed away.
India’s deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, warned that the disaster “could result in substantial” loss of life.
Susheel Kumar Sharma, a local official, said that at least 50 seriously injured people are 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 to motor vehicles on the route of an ongoing annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine at an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,500 feet) and about an 8-kilometer (5-mile) trek from the village.
