Over 200 killed in flash floods across Pakistan and Indian Kashmir

More than 200 people have died in flash floods triggered by heavy rains across Indian Kashmir and neighbouring Pakistan, officials said on Friday, amid fears that the death toll will continue to rise as scores of people remain missing.

A total of 164 people have reportedly been killed in Pakistan’s Himalayan region over the past 24 hours, with hundreds of rescue workers and soldiers deployed to the area to search for survivors believed to have been swept away by mudslides and raging waters.

“It is a horrible situation. We are trying to save hundreds of people, if not thousands,” said Bilal Faizi, spokesman for the rescue agency in the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

At least 146 people were killed by mudslides and flash floods triggered by cloudbursts overnight in several locations in the province, Faizi said.

The death toll might rise further as thousands of people are stranded and rescue workers have not managed to reach them so far, said Taimur Ali from the regional disaster management agency.

Search efforts were hampered by continuing rains and fears of more floods, said Salim Khan, local official in the district of Battagram.

At least 18 people were killed in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and the northern region of Gilgit-Baltistan near the country’s borders with India and China, local officials told dpa.

Over 60 killed in Indian Kashmir

In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, rescue workers retrieved more bodies from mud and debris in the flood-hit Kishtwar region on Friday, raising the death toll to 65.

Javed Dar, a minister in the Jammu and Kashmir government, confirmed the death toll. The number of missing people remains uncertain and rescue efforts are continuing in challenging conditions, he told reporters.

At least 167 people have been rescued in Kishtwar, including 38 seriously injured, district officials said. Authorities warned the toll could rise further after a flash flood of raging water, mud, rocks and rubble swept through a large area around the remote village of Chositi on Thursday afternoon.

Army and National Disaster Response Force personnel, assisted by earth movers, worked to clear boulders, uprooted trees and fallen electricity poles to search for survivors and victims, the Hindu newspaper reported. Local police, other agencies and volunteer groups also joined the efforts.

Chositi was crowded due to a three-week annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Machail Mata, a local Hindu deity. The village is the last stop reachable by vehicles before pilgrims trek more than 8 kilometres up a steep hillside to the temple.

Many may still be trapped under the debris of the deluge, which destroyed a makeshift market, a tented community kitchen for pilgrims, a security post, more than a dozen homes and government buildings, the Hindu reported.

Flash floods and landslides are common in the Himalayan region during the monsoon season. A similar disaster hit Dharali village in neighbouring Uttarakhand earlier this month, where 68 people remain missing and only one body has been recovered.

The seasonal monsoon rains from June to September are crucial for farmers but often leave a trail of death and destruction.

The latest casualties have taken the total death toll from flooding in Pakistan this monsoon season to over 400 since late June, according to data from the national disaster agency.

Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to the impact of the climate change, according to the United Nations.

More than 2,000 people were killed by flooding and subsequent diseases in Pakistan in 2022 when a third of the South Asian country was submerged by water.