About 70 people have been reported missing after a flooded stream swept away an overcrowded bus carrying wedding guests in an Indian-held area of Kashmir on Thursday, a state official said. The bus reportedly had a capacity of only 54 people
Rescue teams were searching for the bus Friday morning but had not been able to locate the vehicle in the gushing waters since heavy storms and strong currents were hampering their efforts, according to state government official Shantmanu, who uses only one name.
The accident occurred when the vehicle was on its way to a wedding ceremony in a village in the Rajouri region, part of the Northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, among the Himalayas, the Associated Press reported. Since the region has been disrupted by heavy rains and the worst floods to be witnessed in 22 years, most wedding ceremonies of the season had been getting postponed.
Landslides occur frequently throughout India during monsoon season, June through September, but the past few days have been particularly bad, New York Daily News reported. Meteorologists said the heavy rains were likely to continue for another two days.
Meanwhile, at least 100 villages throughout the Kashmir valley and 14 people have died in the past two days, with authorities stopping train services in the area and closing schools on Thursday. The victims had been buried by mud from mountain slopes or carried away by floodwaters, including a paramilitary officer whose bunker collapsed on him, police officer Imtiyaz Hussain said.
Since floods continued their assault of overflowing lakes and rivers, including the Jhelum river, which was up to 1.5 meters (4 feet) above its danger level, soldiers and rescue workers used boats to move thousands of people to a higher ground, officials said.
Parts of Srinagar, southwest of Rajouri, were also flooded, including a large neighborhood in Bemina. With 5,000 people being evacuated from the neighborhood, authorities believed 100 others to still be stranded, according to the AP.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both. They have fought three wars, two of them over control of Kashmir, since winning independence from Britain in 1947.
