Gushing mudslides and floodwaters inundated the village of Chasoti in Indian Kashmir on Thursday, washing away pilgrims who had gathered for lunch before trekking up the hill for a popular pilgrimage site.
"We heard a huge sound and it was followed by a flash flood and slush. People were shouting, and some of them fell in the Chenab River. Others were buried under the debris," said Rakesh Sharma, a pilgrim who was injured.
Bags, clothes and other belongings, caked in mud, lay scattered amid broken electric poles and mud on Friday, as rescue workers used shovels, ropes and crossed makeshift bridges in an attempt to extricate people out of the debris.
"We were told that another 100-150 people might be buried under the debris," a rescue worker told news agency ANI.
The Machail Yatra is a popular pilgrimage to the high altitude Himalayan shrine of Machail Mata, one of the manifestations of Goddess Durga, and pilgrims trek to the temple from Chasoti, where the road for vehicles ends.
Thursday's incident comes a little more than a week after a flood and mudslide engulfed an entire village in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
"Nature has been testing us. In the last few days, we have had to deal with landslides, cloudbursts and other natural calamities," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday at the start of a nearly two-hour speech on the country's 79th independence day.
A cloudburst, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, is a sudden, intense downpour of more than 100 millimetres of rain in just one hour that can trigger sudden floods, landslides, and devastation, especially in mountainous regions during the monsoon.
