NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A minimum of 14 individuals had been killed and 102 had been lacking, together with 22 military personnel, in northeastern India on Thursday after heavy rains brought about a glacial lake to burst its banks, triggering floods in a mountain valley, officers mentioned.
The catastrophe, which affected the lives of twenty-two,000 individuals, is the most recent in a sequence of lethal climate occasions within the mountains of South Asia attributed to local weather change, authorities mentioned.
“Search operations are being performed underneath situations of incessant rain and quick flowing water within the Teesta River and roads and bridges have been washed away at many locations,” a protection spokesperson mentioned on social media platform X, previously referred to as Twitter.
A thunderstorm dropped large quantities of rain in a brief interval on the icy Lunak Lake on Wednesday, resulting in flash floods within the Teesta Valley, about 150 kilometers north of Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim state, close to the border with China.
The federal government catastrophe administration company mentioned 26 individuals had been injured and 102 had been lacking, as of early Thursday. Eleven bridges had been swept away.
Video footage printed by information company ANI confirmed flood waters pouring into built-up areas the place a number of homes collapsed, military bases and different services had been broken and automobiles had been submerged.
The Meteorological Division has warned of landslides and disruption of flights, as extra rain is anticipated over the following two days in elements of Sikkim and neighboring states.
Different mountainous areas in India, in addition to elements of neighboring Pakistan and Nepal, have been hit by heavy rains, floods and landslides in latest months, killing dozens.
Final 12 months, Pakistan blamed local weather change for unprecedented floods attributable to historic monsoon rains that washed away roads, crops, infrastructure and bridges, killing at the very least 1,000 individuals.
“Sadly, that is the most recent in a sequence of lethal floods to ravage the Hindu Kush Himalayan area throughout this monsoon, bringing the truth of this area’s excessive vulnerability to local weather develop into stark reduction,” mentioned Pema Gyamchu, the company’s Director-Common. Worldwide Middle for Built-in Mountain Growth based mostly in Nepal.
(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi, Jatindra Sprint in Bhubaneswar; Modifying by Robert Birsel)