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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.
Multiple pilgrims were also feared to be affected by the disaster. Officials said that the pilgrimage had been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to the area to strengthen rescue and relief operations. The pilgrimage began on July 25 and was scheduled to end on Sept. 5.
The first responders to the disaster were villagers and local officials who were later joined by police and disaster management officials, as well as personnel from India’s military and paramilitary forces, Sharma said.
Abdul Majeed Bichoo, a local resident and a social activist from a neighboring village, said that he witnessed the bodies of eight people being pulled out from under the mud. Three horses, which were also completely buried alongside them under debris, were “miraculously recovered alive,” he said.
The 75-year-old Bichoo said Chositi village had become a “sight of complete devastation from all sides” following 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 devastating floods swept away the main community kitchen set up for the pilgrims as well as dozens of vehicles and motorbikes, officials said. They added that more than 200 pilgrims were in the kitchen when the tragedy struck. The flash floods also damaged and washed away many homes, clustered together in the foothills.
Photos and videos circulating on social media showed extensive damage caused in the village with multiple vehicles and homes damaged.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that “the situation is being monitored closely” and offered his 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. 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.
Kishtwar is home to multiple hydroelectric power projects, which experts have long warned pose a threat to the region’s fragile ecosystem.

SRINAGAR, India: At least 34 people died and more than 200 were missing following sudden, heavy rain in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said on Thursday, the second such disaster in the Himalayas in a little over a week.

The incident occurred in Chasoti town of Kishtwar district, a stopover point on a popular pilgrimage route. It comes a little over a week after a heavy flood and mudslide engulfed an entire village in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

The flood washed away a community kitchen and a security post set up in the village, a pit stop along the pilgrimage route to the Machail Mata temple, one of the officials, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media about the incident.

“A large number of pilgrims had gathered for lunch and they were washed away,” the official said.

The Machail yatra is a popular pilgrimage to the high altitude Himalayan shrine of Machail Mata, one of the manifestations of Goddess Durga, and pilgrims trek to the temple from Chasoti, where the road for vehicles ends.

“The news is grim and accurate, verified information from the area hit by the cloudburst is slow in arriving,” Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of India’s federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, said in a post on X.

Television footage showed pilgrims crying in fear as water flooded the village.

The disaster occurred at 11.30 am local time, Ramesh Kumar, the divisional commissioner of Kishtwar district, told news agency ANI, adding that local police and disaster response officials had reached the scene.

“Army, air force teams have also been activated. Search and rescue operations are underway,” Kumar said.

A cloudburst, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, is a sudden, intense downpour of over 100 mm (4 inches) of rain in just one hour that can trigger sudden floods, landslides, and devastation, especially in mountainous regions during the monsoon.

The local weather office in Srinagar predicted intense showers for several regions in Kashmir on Thursday, including Kishtwar, asking residents to stay away from loose structures, electric poles and old trees as there was a possibility of mudslides and flash floods.