PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed over 280 people and left scores of others missing in India and Pakistan over the past 24 hours, officials said Friday, as rescuers brought to safety some 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in the neighboring 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.
Dozens missing in remote Himalayan village
In Indian-controlled Kashmir, rescuers searched for missing people in the remote Himalayan village of Chositi on Friday after flash floods a day earlier left at least 60 people dead and at least 80 missing, officials said.
At least 300 people were rescued Thursday after a powerful cloudburst triggered floods and landslides, but the operation was halted overnight. Officials said many missing people were believed to have been washed away.
Harvinder Singh, a local resident, joined the rescue efforts immediately after the disaster and helped retrieve 33 bodies from under mud, he said.
At least 50 seriously injured people were treated in local hospitals, many of them rescued from a stream filled with mud and debris. Disaster management official Mohammed Irshad said the number of missing people could increase.
Weather officials forecast more heavy rains and floods in the area.
Chositi, in Kashmir’s Kishtwar district, is the last village accessible to motor vehicles on the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine at an altitude of 3,000 meters (9,500 feet). Officials said the pilgrimage, which began July 25 and was scheduled to end on Sept. 5, was suspended.
The devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for the pilgrims, as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes. More than 200 pilgrims were in the kitchen at the time of the flood, which also damaged or washed away many of the homes clustered together in the foothills, officials said.
Sneha, who gave only one name, said her husband and a daughter were swept away as floodwater gushed down the mountain. The two were having meals at the community kitchen while she and her son were nearby. The family had come for the pilgrimage, she said.
Photos and videos on social media show extensive damage with household goods strewn next to damaged vehicles and homes in the village. Authorities made makeshift bridges Friday to help stranded pilgrims cross a muddy water channel, and used dozens of earthmovers to shift boulders, uprooted trees and electricity poles and other debris.
Throughout Friday, authorities evacuated nearly 4,000 pilgrims stranded in various parts of the forested area, officials said.
Kishtwar district is home to multiple hydroelectric power projects, which experts have long warned pose a threat to the region’s fragile ecosystem.
Hundreds of tourists trapped by floods in Pakistan
In northern and northwestern Pakistan, flash floods killed at least 243 people in the past 24 hours, including 157 people who died in the flood-hit Buner district in northwest Pakistan on Friday.
Mohammad Suhail told The Associated Press that dozens of people were still missing, and rescue operations were underway.
He said 78 bodies were recovered from various parts of the district by midday Friday, and another 79 were pulled from the rubble of collapsed homes and flooded villages later.
“The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people,” Suhail said.
Dozens were injured as the deluge destroyed homes in villages in Buner, where authorities declared a state of emergency Friday. Ambulances have transported 56 bodies to local hospitals, according to a government statement.
The helicopter that crashed Friday was on a relief mission when it went down in the northwest, provincial chief minister Ali Amin Gandapur said.
At least 35 people were still missing in these areas, according to local officials.
Rescuers backed by boats and helicopters worked to reach stranded residents. Dozens of villagers were still missing and the death toll is likely to rise, Buner government administrator Kashif Qayyum said.
The latest fatalities bring the total number of rain-related deaths to 556 since June 26, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Deaths were reported from different parts of Pakistan on Thursday. Bilal Faizi, a provincial emergency service spokesman in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said rescuers worked for hours to save 1,300 tourists after they were trapped by flash flooding and landslides in the Siran Valley in Mansehra district on Thursday.
The Gilgit-Baltistan region has been hit by multiple floods since July, triggering landslides along the Karakoram Highway, a key trade and travel route linking Pakistan and China that is used by tourists to travel to the scenic north. The region is home to scenic glaciers that provide 75% of Pakistan’s stored water supply.
During the summer, when schools are closed for more than two months, hundreds of thousands of people travel to scenic destinations in northern and northwestern Pakistan. This year, despite repeated government warnings about landslides and flash floods, many still visited popular resorts in flood-hit areas. Officials said rescuers had evacuated nearly 2,000 tourists from rain- and flood-affected regions to safer locations in the past 24 hours.
Pakistan’s disaster management agency has issued fresh alerts for glacial lake outburst flooding in the north, warning travelers to avoid affected areas.
A study released this week by World Weather Attribution, a network of international scientists, found rainfall in Pakistan from June 24 to July 23 was 10% to 15% heavier because of global warming. In 2022, the country’s worst monsoon season on record killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage.
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Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan. Contributors from Pakistan include Anwarullah Khan in Bajur, Abdul Rehman in Gilgit, Rasool Dawar in Peshawar and Ishfaq Hussain in Muzaffarabad.
Channi Anand And Riaz Khan, The Associated Press
