Srinagar: At least 17 people are feared dead as a landslide swept through residential houses in a remote village of Jammu and Kashmir’s Budgam district on Monday. Officials said rescue and relief work was under way, and six bodies, including those of a 22-day-old baby and four women, were retrieved from beneath the debris.
The victims were identified as Naseema and her sister Shugufta, Rukhsana, Shameema, Muhammad Shaban Chopan and Muhammad Aslam.
Elsewhere, a youth was washed away in Udhampur as flash floods triggered by nonstop torrential rains swept much of the state, damaging property including houses, bridges and roads. The situation is grim particularly in the Valley, as the Jhelum and other rivers swelled Sunday, forcing people to flee their homes. The weather office predicts further downpours till Saturday.
In September 2014, the Valley and parts of the state were hit by unprecedented floods, leaving at least 300 people dead and thousands of residential houses destroyed. The J&K police said it had rescued 728 people caught in the flash floods or trapped in house collapses across the Valley in the past 24 hours.
Reports said a hillside collapsed onto three houses in Hajam Mohalla of Laddan village. Three families comprising 14 people and three guests from southern Shopian district staying with one of these were buried alive. Locals quickly began rescue work which was intensified after Army, CRPF and police teams arrived at the scene, using shovels and diggers to locate any survivors.
Police said two more houses collapsed in the impact of the landslide, but their inmates escaped unhurt. Nearly twenty cattle also perished in the incident. All the three houses owned by Gulam Nabi Hajam, Muhammad Abdullah Hajam and Lal Din Hajam were covered in earth and boulders.
