MALIN: Rescue workers were losing hope on Friday of finding survivors amid the mud and debris from a major landslide in western India, where 150 people are feared to have been killed.

Sixty bodies and eight survivors have now been pulled from the site where a village once stood in a remote part of Maharashtra state, but incessant rains and strong winds have hampered rescue efforts.

“The debris is huge and since it is wet mud, there is negligible chance of air pockets. Any more survivors would be miracles,” Ganesh Pawar, medical officer at the rural hospital treating casualties, said.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has said about 160 people were thought to have been living in the dozens of houses damaged when a hill gave way and cascaded onto their village of Malin.

The force, which mobilised 378 rescue workers to help with the search, worked into the night in a desperate hunt for any more survivors after lights powered by portable generators were set up.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2014