Flash floods triggered by torrential rains kill over 200 people in India and Pakistan

CHOSITI, India (AP) — Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed over 200 people and left scores others missing in India and Pakistan over the past 24 hours, officials said Friday, as rescuers brought to safety some 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in the neighbouring countries.

In Pakistan, a helicopter carrying relief supplies to the flood-hit northwestern Bajaur crashed on Friday due to bad weather, killing all five people on board, including two pilots, a government statement said.

Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in India’s Himalayan regions and Pakistan’s northern areas, 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.

In India-controlled Kashmir, rescuers searched for missing people in the remote Himalayan village of Chositi on Friday after flash floods a day earlier left at least 60 people dead and at least 80 missing, officials said.

Officials halted rescue operations overnight but rescued at least 300 people Thursday after a powerful cloudburst triggered floods and landslides. Officials said many missing people were believed to have been washed away.

Harvinder Singh, a local resident, joined the rescue efforts immediately after the disaster and helped retrieving 33 bodies from under mud, he said.

At least 50 seriously injured people were treated in local hospitals, many of them rescued from a stream filled with mud and debris.

Disaster management official Mohammed Irshad said the number of missing people could increase.

Weather officials forecast more heavy rains and floods in the area.

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