By Asif Shahzad and Krishna N. Das
SRINAGAR/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Heavy rain swept across the Himalayas, killing at least 36 people in India over the past 24 hours and forcing authorities to open major dams, in turn triggering flood alerts on three rivers in neighbouring Pakistan.
In the deadliest single disaster, a landslide killed 33 people near the Hindu mountain shrine of Vaishno Devi on a pilgrim route in India’s federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
Three more people died as floodwaters burst the banks of rivers in the district of Doda and swamped low-lying areas, authorities added.
About 200 children were stranded on Wednesday after flood water engulfed a school building in the northern state of Punjab, local media said.
Vehicles tumbled off the Madhopur barrage over the Tawi river when parts of it collapsed after being lashed by heavy rain overnight into Wednesday morning, video images showed. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Some highways linking Jammu to the rest of India were also damaged.
Officials were battling to restore “almost non-existent” telecommunications services, Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said.
“We had 612 mm rainfall in Jammu region since Aug. 23 till today. This is 726% above-normal rainfall in the region during this time of the year. It is the highest rainfall in the region since 1950,” Mukhtar Ahmad, Director at the India Meteorological Department in Srinagar, told Reuters.
There were forecasts for more rain and thunderstorms with gusty winds in mountainous Ladakh, and for heavy rain for Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday.
Some water had begun to recede on Wednesday, but many rivers were still at dangerous levels, authorities said.
“The immediate priority is restoration of electricity, water supply and mobile services, for which the authorities have been working continuously overnight,” Jitendra Singh, India’s science and technology minister, said in a post on X.
DAMS OPEN
Over the border, flood water engulfed parts of Kartarpur Sahib, a famous Sikh temple in Pakistan’s Punjab, a rescue official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Pakistan has also battled monsoon rains in recent weeks, with more than 167,000 people displaced in Punjab, including 40,000 who left voluntarily after flood warnings since August 14.
The official death toll from Pakistan’s floods since the start of the monsoon season in late June stood at 804 on Wednesday, half of them in August.
India opened the gates of major dams on rivers in its part of Kashmir after the heavy rains, an Indian government source said.
Pakistan said it had received a warning from India about downstream flooding, and issued its own alert for three rivers flowing into its territory.
India routinely releases water from its dams when they get too full, with the excess flowing into Pakistan.
On Wednesday, authorities said there had been a record increase in the levels of the Ravi, Chenab and Sutlej rivers in Pakistan.
Pakistan says New Delhi had passed on two earlier flood warnings since Sunday.
(Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar, Krishna Das in New Delhi, Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore; writing by Tanvi Mehta; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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