SRINAGAR: Twelve more people lost their lives in rain-related incidents in J&K on Monday, taking the death toll from flash floods and other weather-related incidents in two days to 22, while eight people are still missing. The meteorological department has predicted more rains in the coming days.
In the border district of Poonch in the Jammu division, a mudslide and landslide, triggered by heavy rains, struck a katcha house in the Loran-Dumilan area on Monday. The house was buried in the mudslide. It had seven members of a family present at the time of the accident.
The locals and civil administration immediately launched a search and rescue operation, but all of them succumbed. Their bodies have been recovered. The dead include three women, a two-year-old girl, two men and a four-year-old boy.
Meanwhile, shooting stones caused by heavy rains struck near Ragi Nallah along Jammu-Kishtwar national highway in the mountainous Doda district on Monday morning. A passenger bus and two other vehicles were moving through the area.
An official said the passenger bus came under the direct impact of the shooting stones, while the other two vehicles were partially hit. While the occupants of the other vehicles escaped unhurt, eight people travelling in the bus were injured and rushed to a nearby hospital. Hospital authorities declared two of them as brought dead. Three of them were critically injured.
In another incident, an 85-year old woman, identified as Shiv Devi, was killed after her house came under mudslide in the Kashtigarh area of Doda district. In the Rajouri district, a man identified as Vikas Ahmad was washed away by flood waters in the morning hours. Another body was recovered from a stream in Mendhar.