MUZAFFARABAD: At least 12 villagers, women and children among them, were swept away by flash floods in the village of Machiara triggered by heavy rain on Wednesday.

Only five bodies had been found till late in the evening. Officials said that most of the victims had been collecting firewood which water channels usually carried after heavy rains.

In the wake of heavy rains, a lot of firewood and split logs were floating in the channel and the villagers were trying to get hold of them when they were swept away by raging torrents, Superintendent of Police Javed Yousuf said.

He said seven people were injured and some of them were rescued by villagers.

A villager, who identified himself as Mushtaq Mughal, told Dawn that some of the children who drowned were going to school. The dead or the missing were identified as Mir Muhammad Yousuf, Mir Mudassar, Umair, Munawwar Jan, Mir Alam, Said Alam, Sufi Mirza, Muhammad Hanif, Muhammad Riyaz, Tahira, Sahib Noor and Arshad Shah.

Zia Ahmed Khawaja, Director of State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), told Dawn that five bodies had been taken out of the nullah and his organisation had set up camps at various points along the Neelum and Jhelum rivers to look for the remaining bodies.

The channel known as Machiara Nullah merges after a few kilometers into the Bhedi Nullah and after winding through mountain slopes finally falls into the River Neelum near Patikka, some 19 kilometres from here.

AJK’s Minister for Forests Sardar Javaid Ayub told Dawn by phone from Machiara that heavy rains had played havoc with the farmland and crops.