13 killed in India floods, stranded pilgrims airlifted

Monsoon downpours caused flash floods that killed 13 people in India's Himalayan foothills, officials said Friday, with helicopters rescuing hundreds stranded near a renowned Hindu shrine.

Flooding and landslides are common and cause widespread devastation during India's treacherous monsoon season, but experts say climate change is increasing their frequency and severity.

Thirteen deaths have been reported across the northern state of Uttarakhand so far, disaster official Vinod Kumar Suman told AFP.

District officials said around 700 people were rescued by airlift while travelling to Kedarnath temple, a popular pilgrimage destination dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.

"We are flying multiple choppers to bring down the pilgrims who were on their way," Suman said.

The temple sits nearly 3,600 metres (11,800 feet) above sea level and access is only possible in the summer via a gruelling 22-kilometre (14-mile) uphill trek.

It is thronged by thousands of pilgrims each year at a time when the annual monsoon downpours are at their peak.

Monsoon rains across the region from June to September offer respite from the summer heat and are crucial to replenishing water supplies.

They are also vital for agriculture, and therefore the livelihoods of millions of farmers and food security for South Asia's nearly two billion people.

More than 200 people were killed in the southern state of Kerala this week when landslides hit villages and tea plantations, with search and rescue operations ongoing.

Two others were killed this week in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state, where rescuers are still searching for more than two dozen reported missing.

Teams scour landslide site for remaining dead

Army teams pushed deeper Friday into Indian tea plantations and villages struck by landslides that killed more than 200 people, working on the assumption that nobody was left alive to rescue.

The number of fatal floods and landslides in India has increased in recent years and experts say climate change is exacerbating the problem.

Days of torrential monsoon rains battered the southern coastal state of Kerala before twin landslides struck before dawn on Tuesday, with more than 500 soldiers among the rescue crews.

Military engineers laid a temporary bridge to speed up search efforts after earlier relying on jury-rigged ziplines to transport recovered bodies over raging waters.

"The assumption is that there is nobody left to be rescued," a statement issued late Thursday by the Kerala state government said.

Around 8,000 people were taking shelter at emergency camps around the disaster site in Wayanad district.

State health minister Veena George said relief workers in the camps were counselling traumatised survivors and cremating dead animals in an effort to prevent disease outbreaks.

George told AFP on Friday that 199 bodies had been recovered.

But the final toll is certain to be higher, with rescuers reporting the gruesome discovery of more than 100 body parts in flood waters or buried in the muddy earth.

Wayanad is famed for the tea estates that crisscross its hilly countryside and which rely on a large pool of labourers for planting and harvest.

Many of the victims were workers and their families, who lived in brick-walled row houses that were inundated by a powerful wall of brown sludge as their occupants slept.

Uprooted trees and rocks were strewn about one abandoned village in front of overturned vehicles and partially collapsed homes.

Monsoon rains across the region from June to September offer respite from the summer heat and are crucial to replenishing water supplies.

They are vital for agriculture -- and therefore the livelihoods of millions of farmers and food security for South Asia's nearly two billion people.

But they also bring regular destruction in the form of flash floods and landslides.

At least 572 millimetres (22.5 inches) of rain fell in Wayanad in the two days before the landslides, according to state government figures.

Damming, deforestation and development projects in India have also exacerbated the human toll.

India's worst landslide in recent decades was in 1998, when rockfalls triggered by heavy monsoon rains killed at least 220 people and buried the tiny Himalayan village of Malpa.