Sudden floods triggered by heavy rains have killed more than 400 people across parts of Pakistan, India-administered Kashmir and Nepal, authorities have said, with scores of people still missing.
In northwestern Pakistan, at least 321 people were killed in the space of 48 hours, local authorities reported Saturday, with more than ten villages in the Buner region of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province devastated by flash flooding.
Washed out roads and landslides have prevented emergency workers from accessing the affected communities in Buner, where dozens more people are feared to be buried under rubble, according to Bilal Faizi, a spokesperson for the emergency response agency Rescue 122.
“Over 120 bodies have been recovered from this area alone so far. Just a few days ago, there was a vibrant, living community here. Now, there’s nothing but heaps of large rocks and debris,” Faizi told CNN.
Separately, five crew members were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province after a helicopter crashed during relief efforts, according to a local government official.
In India-administered Kashmir, at least 60 people died and more than 200 were missing in the town of Chashoti on Friday, a popular pilgrimage destination for Hindu tourists, Reuters reported.
At least 41 people died in Nepal, with another 121 left injured, Reuters reported, citing the country’s disaster management authority.
“When the rain intensified, it wasn’t long before I felt as if an earthquake had struck — the whole ground was shaking,” said Farhad Ali, a student living in Salarzai, in hard-hit northern Pakistan.
“In the pouring rain, my entire family ran outside, and we saw a torrent of mud and massive boulders rushing through the stream near our house. It felt like doomsday had arrived, with scenes straight out of the end of the world.”
Torrential rains, huge landslides and deadly floodwaters ripped through the region in recent weeks after a particularly fierce monsoon season began in early June, washing out entire neighborhoods and reducing homes to rubble.
Rain across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is expected to intensify from Sunday according to Pakistan’s Meteorological Department which is warning of more flash floods and urban flooding. Social media footage showed huge streams of brown water rushing through the province. Authorities urged residents to avoid tourist areas and not cross rivers during the floods.
It comes after India’s Meteorological Department said on Wednesday that the rainfall was due to a “cloudburst,” which is a sudden and heavy downpour of more than 100 millimeters (4 inches) of rain in just one hour.
Analysts warned the human-made climate crisis has exacerbated the intensity and frequency of seasonal floods in the Himalayas this year.
Dramatic video shared on social media showed roads turned into raging rivers, while the downpour devastated entire buildings and swept away vehicles in Indian-administered Kashmir.
In one of the clips, a wall of water, mud and debris could be seen rolling down the mountainside.
Frantic rescue operations persisted across the region, with army and police personnel working to find those missing. Some of the rescued people have been taken to hospitals.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also chaired an emergency meeting on the cloudburst and subsequent rescue efforts in the capital Islamabad on Friday.
Bodies were swept away and entire community hubs washed out in the foothills of India-administered Kashmir, eyewitnesses and emergency crews recalled, as survivors struggled to reconcile the scale of destruction.
One 75-year-old village resident described a “sight of complete devastation from all sides” after he saw eight bodies being pulled out from under the mud.
“It was heartbreaking and an unbearable sight,” Abdul Majeed Bichoo, a social activist, told the Associated Press. Miraculously, three horses were “recovered alive,” he added.
Earlier this month, another surge of flood water tore through a mountainous village in the Himalayas in India’s northern Uttarakhand state, leaving at least four people dead.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said he’d cancelled some events that had been planned to celebrate the anniversary of India’s independence from Britain on Friday.
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.
