Srinagar, India--Rescuers on Monday pulled three bodies from landslides in Indian Kashmir and were searching for those still buried as hundreds fled their homes after flooding triggered by heavy rain.
Police and witnesses said landslides had buried 16 people in several houses in Chadoora, the worst hit area of the Himalayan region where hundreds were killed in devastating floods last September.
"We have extricated three bodies from under the landslide so far," said regional police chief Javid Gillani.
"We have some more equipment in place and that will allow us to speed up looking for the rest," Gillani told AFP.
A villager described how the ground above the houses in Chadoora, 15 kilometres (10 miles) west of the main city of Srinagar, collapsed without warning.
"All of them just suddenly got buried alive. Now they are nowhere to be found," Mohammad Sultan told AFP.
An AFP reporter said earth-moving machines had been unable to get close because roads had been swept away, leaving police and soldiers armed only with shovels to search for the victims.
One local police officer speaking on condition of anonymity said there was "no hope of finding anyone alive" given the scale of the landslide.
Gillani said 237 families had been evacuated, most of them from Chadoora, after the government issued a flood alert Monday when the River Jhelum swelled to dangerously high levels.
One man was washed away in Pacheri village, some 250 kilometers south of Srinagar, when he tried to cross a flash flood in his car.
"He is presumed dead but we have not found the body as yet," a top regional administrator, Pawan Kotwal, told AFP.
With more rain forecast for the next few days, authorities set up relief camps in Srinagar and urged people living near the Jhelum to move to safer areas.
AFP
