AlQa'dah 11, 1435, Sep 6, 2014, SPA -- More than 100 people have died in floods and landslides caused by heavy monsoon rains in India-administered Kashmir and officials warned Saturday that the toll could rise, according to dpa. At least 10,000 people were stranded across Jammu and Kashmir state, NDTV reported, and the army and air force were deployed for rescue efforts. At least 9,000 stranded people were rescued Friday and Saturday, an Indian Army spokesman said on Twitter. All schools in the region were closed, NDTV reported. There was no electricity in large swathes of southern Kashmir and communication lines were down. Rains continued for the fifth day Saturday but the weather department said the worst was over and the conditions were expected to improve from Sunday. On Thursday, 63 people went missing when a bus was washed away by a flash flood in Rajouri district. Twenty-seven bodies had been recovered and there was a slim chance of recovering another 32 missing, officials said. Four had swum to safety. On Friday, 14 bodies were recovered from a landslide site in Rajouri district but many more were feared trapped, IANS news agency reported. More than 30 people were killed in other incidents of landslides or had been swept away by fast-flowing rivers that had flooded their banks, IANS and NDTV said. Efforts were on to rescue nine soldiers whose boat capsized while they were engaged in a rescue mission in Pulwama district, Lieutenant General Subrata Saha, an army official involved in the rescue operations, was quoted as saying by NDTV. The southern part of the state had been worst hit by the floods, with the Tawi river flowing 11 feet above its danger mark in some areas, Saha said. Flood waters had entered both Srinagar, the summer capital and Jammu, the winter capital, of the state. Several bridges on the Tawi river which flows past Jammu were closed to traffic. The Jammu-Srinagar national highway, the key artery in the region, was closed for the third consecutive day, as were several other roads in the region. India's monsoon season usually lasts from June until September and exacts a heavy toll, both in terms of human lives and destruction of agricultural crops and property. Last year, more than 5,700 people died in rain brought on floods and landslides in Uttarakhand, another northern Indian hill state.
