Over 50 people have died as a result of landslides that were caused by torrential rain in India’s Himalayas over the weekend, and more than 20 people are still buried or missing, according to officials.
Reuters reports that unusually heavy rain and melting glaciers have brought deadly flash floods to the mountains of India and neighbouring Pakistan and Nepal over the past year or two, with government officials increasingly blaming climate change.
Hundreds of people were at the rescue sites as emergency personnel tried to clear debris in television images from India’s Himachal Pradesh state. The images showed buildings flattened by landslides, buses and automobiles hanging precariously on the edge of cliffs, and houses destroyed by landslides.
“Again, tragedy has befallen Himachal Pradesh, with continuous rainfall over the past 48 hours,” the state’s chief minister, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, said in a post on the messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
More than 50 people had died in rain-related incidents within 24 hours, Sukhu told the Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
“This number can rise further because 20 people are still trapped,” he said.
Meanwhile, officials from the state disaster management authority said that 41 bodies had been recovered by Monday evening.
“Another 13 people are missing but, as time passes, we are losing hope that they will be pulled out alive,” said state disaster management official Praveen Bhardwaj.
In one of the most deadly incidents, a temple collapsed in the state capital, Shimla, with rescuers pulling out at least nine bodies, the chief minister said.
In Solan district, houses collapsed, killing at least seven people, and a mother and her child were killed in Mandi district when their house collapsed, Bhardwaj said.
In Himachal and the adjoining state of Uttarakhand, where two people died and four were missing in incidents due to the rains, television video showed swollen rivers breaking their banks, the Uttarakhand Disaster Management control centre told Reuters.
The severity of the rain is expected to lessen starting on Tuesday, according to the India Meteorological Department, which issued a “red alert” for both states on Monday.
As much as 273 mm (10.75 inches) and 419 mm (16.54 inches) of rain fell in Himachal and Uttarakhand, respectively, in the 24 hours prior to 8:30 am IST (3 am GMT) on Monday, according to the weather office.
According to state officials, schools and other educational institutions were forced to close in Himachal Pradesh, and residents of susceptible areas were relocated to relief shelters.
Authorities in Uttarakhand declared the Char Dham pilgrimage route blocked until Tuesday due to landslides.
