SRINAGAR: The main city in India-held Kashmir has “drowned completely” under floodwaters, a senior official said on Friday.

Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the floods were the worst to hit the disputed mountainous territory in over a century.

As the waters began to recede, the extent of the devastation in Srinagar was becoming clear. “Srinagar has drowned completely, it’s unrecognisable. Almost everything is in ruins, it is just unimaginable,” Mehraj-Ud-Din Shah, State Disaster Response Force chief of Kashmir region, said by phone.

He said work was “in full swing” to rescue people. “But even now, around one lakh (100,000) people are believed to be stranded in different places,” he said.

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who has come under fire over the slow pace of rescue efforts, said on Thursday the city had been “taken out”, as he defended his government’s performance.

“My government was totally inundated. I had no government for the first 36 hours,” he told the Press Trust of India news agency.

“The establishment was wiped out. The state assembly building, the high court, the police headquarters and hospitals are all under water,” Mr Abdullah said.

Sayed Ali Geelani, one of the best-known Kashmiri leaders, criticised what he branded the “pathetic” relief effort by the state and central governments.

“I want to congratulate the young people of our community for coming together and for the efforts that they have shown in the aftermath of these floods,” the 84-year-old told supporters outside a mosque in Srinagar after attending Friday prayers.

As Mr Geelani spoke, a helicopter dropped food packages nearby which the gathered crowd began to rip up in anger.

Srinagar has also been hit by looting, leading some householders to risk their lives and stay in their homes to protect their property.

Jamal Ahmed Dar, who lives close to Srinagar’s Dal Lake, said his neighbours had caught two looters red-handed.

A correspondent witnessed two men on a raft made out of a plastic water tank trying to break into a house in the upmarket Jawara Nagar neighbourhood before they were chased away by locals who pursued them on a flimsy wooden boat.

“Almost every second family has one or two missing members,” said Syed Munir Qadri, who has been looking for his father for three days in Srinagar, a city of some 1.2 million now facing an acute shortage of fuel, food and medicines.

Munir Ahmad was trapped for two days with his brother and domestic help as waters swirled around his Srinagar home before they were taken to safety by a rescue boat.

All but one of Srinagar’s major hospitals were under water, and six infants died in a maternity hospital due to a lack of medical care, a rescuer said. Telecommunication links to the city have been down for days.

Meanwhile, rescuers raced on Friday to help communities hit by landslides in the region.

Media said that more than 40 people were killed by a landslide at a village south of Srinagar.

“The entire village slid down in a matter of minutes, burying all houses under tons of rock and mud. The villagers had no time to run to safety,” the CNN-IBN TV channel said on its news website.

The ferocity of the floods has prompted an outpouring of anger in a region where a revolt against Indian rule has simmered for quarter of a century.

Many people praised the army on social media for its rescue and relief efforts, but others vented their anger at delays in getting help to survivors.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2014