(Reuters) -Floods and landslides unleashed by unrelenting rain in India’s eastern hill region of Darjeeling and neighbouring Nepal killed more than 70 people after washing away homes, roads and bridges, authorities said.
In Nepal, the death toll in floods and landslides rose to 50, with the eastern district of Ilam bordering India recording 37 deaths, a spokesperson for the Armed Police Force said.
At least 18 people died in Darjeeling and several people were still missing on Monday, as relief and restoration work got underway, said local government officials in India’s state of West Bengal, warning that the death toll was likely to rise as details flowed in from remote areas.
“Two iron bridges have collapsed, several roads have been damaged and flooded, huge tracts of land… have been inundated,” Mamata Banerjee, the state’s chief minister, said in a post on X.
The districts of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, which are home to tea plantations, were among those affected, she said, adding that a total of 23 deaths have been reported across northern West Bengal state since the weekend.
More rain is expected after the weekend’s “extremely heavy” downpours in Darjeeling, said H R Biswas, the regional weather head in the state’s capital of Kolkata.
The Himalayan hill resort of Darjeeling, the main city in the Darjeeling district, is famed for its tea and draws tourists with spectacular views of Mount Kanchenjunga, the world’s third highest peak. Banerjee urged tourists to stay put until they were safely evacuated.
Highway traffic was disrupted as part of an iron bridge over the Balason River linking the city of Siliguri in the plains with the hill town of Mirik collapsed in the heavy rain, and many roads caved in.
Large amounts of debris littered the roads, a local disaster management official said, making it impossible for rescuers to reach many places in the remote area.
Visuals from Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, showed damaged houses filled with mud and rocks in a village in Darjeeling. The landslides occurred as people slept, hurling rocks and sludge down the mountain slopes, locals said.
“The entire middle part of our village has been wiped out from the landslide… The land here is very fragile and there’s no place to stay and all houses are buried. People are living in relief camp,” said local resident Bijay, who gave only one name.
(Reporting by Jatindra Dash in Bhubaneswar and Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu; Writing by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Susan Fenton)
