Leh toll rises to 132, 600 still missing

Leh toll rises to 132, 600 still missing
PTI
LEH, AUG 7
Twenty bodies were today pulled out from slush and debris in Leh town ravaged by flash floods, raising the toll to 132 even as rescuers intensified operations in the high altitude terrain to search for 600 missing people.
Six Indian Air Force aircraft carrying relief material, rescue workers and doctors landed here today to provide succour to the people of the region affected by Thursday night’s cloudbursts and freak rains.
“We have recovered 132 bodies so far and at least 370 are injured. The number of missing is being ascertained”, State Police Chief Kuldeep Khoda said, adding the toll may go up.
Sources fear that the death toll could cross over 500 as several remote villages were yet to be accessed by rescue teams. Thousands were left homeless.
A small village before Choglumsur, which bore the brunt of the incessant rains, was completely wiped out as rescue workers were looking for survivors in the mud slush and debris.
Gushing waters flattened houses, tossed cars and buses leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. People hit by the flash floods were still coming to grips with the catastrophe.
Rescuers waded through knee-deep mud to extricate people trapped under debris of collapsed buildings.
Relief material, including blankets, dry food material, medicine and other immediate requirements of the affected people landed here, a defence spokesman said.
A contractor told senior state administration officials that 150 labourers employed by him were missing from Shyong village where he had lodged them. The colony was set up along Indus river and the officials feared that many huts would have been washed away in the flash floods.
“The Indo Tibetan Border Police has retrieved 30 dead bodies. We have rescued 100 victims from under the debris today.  Three relief camps have also been opened up since yesterday”, ITBP spokesperson Deepak Pandey said.