India’s southern state of Kerala was on Wednesday beginning two days of mourning after landslides left at least 144 dead and more than 500 injured in Wayanad district.
As many as 190 people are still missing, officials told The National.
Wayanad, a hilly region in the Western Ghats mountains recorded heavy rains over the past few weeks.
Two back-to-back landslides hit the region’s Chooral Mala and Mundakkai and nearby areas on Tuesday morning, leaving a trail of destruction and sweeping away houses.
"As per the official records, we have recovered 144 bodies. We are expecting the death toll to rise," Dr V Venu, secretary of the Kerala government, told The National.
"Rescue operations are still ongoing. Emergency workers have managed to build a temporary bridge and rescued 1,600 people from remote areas that were earlier inaccessible."
The national flag was being flown at half-mast outside the Kerala Legislative Assembly.
Fawas Shameem, a government official at Wayanad, told The National that at least 32 bodies were found downstream of the Chaliyar river in the neighbouring Malappuram district after they were swept away.
Mr Shameem said there were reports of the death toll surpassing 180 but officials at Mepaddi village council in Wayanad had received 102 bodies.
Most of the victims were plantation workers and lived in small houses built at the base of tea estates.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said his government was relocating rescued people including children and pregnant women to relief camps. The government has set up 82 relief camps in the district.
More than 8,000 people have been moved to the camps, Mr Vijayan said in a press conference.
Hundreds of people are still believed to be trapped under debris in Mundakkai after a bridge connecting it to Chooral Mala was swept away in a torrent of flood waters.
Teams of National Disaster and Rescue Forces, army, air force, civil defence, firefighters and police attempted to contact isolated areas, using ropes to cross the river. Helicopters from the Air Force were also mobilised for the rescue work.
“We have deployed 12 teams out of which four teams including 90 personnel of the NDRF are working in Wayanad along with other security forces, local volunteers and other agencies. We have recovered bodies and evacuated many people,” Mr Sudhakar, deputy commandant of NDRF fourth battalion, told The National.
“We are facing issues of waterlogging. We used our rope rescue equipment to cross the river and made an anchor on the other side. NDRF teams evacuated several people using the same ropes. The bridge is being made. Once it is ready, it would be easy to evacuate,” he said.
The first landslide hit Meppadi at 1am. As rescue operations were launched, a second landslide struck near a school at Chooral Mala in the region at 4am.
The school was being used as a camp for survivors of the earlier landslide, and nearby houses and shops were flooded with water and mud.
Mr Vijayan on Tuesday said more than 3,000 people were rescued and moved to 45 relief camps in Wayanad.
Health Minister Veena George told The National the postmortems of at least 100 people were conducted on Tuesday.
Survivors arrived at hospitals on Wednesday morning in the hope of collecting the bodies of their relatives.
“I have come here to collect the mortal remains of my elder and younger brother. My sister-in-law has been found but one child is still missing,” one survivor said.
