BALTAL: Sixteen people were killed in held Kashmir, with rescuers searching for dozens more missing, after flash floods swept away hundreds of tents near a popular Hindu pilgrimage site, officials said on Saturday.

Around 10,000 people were camped near the remote Amarnath temple, nestled in a Himalayan mountain cave, when a sudden cloudburst triggered a deluge.

Frequent whirring helicopter sorties were evacuating the dead and an unknown number of panicked and injured pilgrims from the Baltal base camp to the north of the shrine.

“We found 16 bodies so far and at least 40 are missing,” an official from the state disaster response agency said.

“Security forces and all the rescue teams are looking for the missing and injured,” the official said.

The Indian army said it had deployed two infantry battalions and special forces units to help with the search alongside search and rescue dog squads.

They have so far taken 63 people with injuries away for treatment, including to a field hospital set up by the army in mountains near the shrine.

Rescuers were using handheld thermal imaging devices to look for victims who might be trapped under the mud, the army statement said.

Vivek, a pilgrim who escaped the destructive downpour, said that some of his family and members of the group he travelled to the site with were still missing.

“We were a group of 150 and 30 of us are still stuck up there. Their phones are switched off.” The annual pilgrimage sees hundreds of thousands of people trek up for days through rugged mountain passes to reach the shrine.The pilgrimage is being held for the first time since 2019 after a two-year halt brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In normal times it is one of the biggest religious events in held Kashmir.

This year the pilgrimage is being staged alongside a huge security deployment involving tens of thousands of soldiers and police.

But treacherous weather in the mountains has in the past posed a bigger threat than security issues in the restive territory. Nearly 250 people died in 1996 when they were suddenly caught up in snowstorms that hit the area.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2022