Jammu, Aug. 30 – At least 11 people, including seven members of a single family, were killed and one person went missing after two separate cloudbursts struck Jammu and Kashmir’s Ramban and Reasi districts in the early hours of Saturday, officials said.
A police officer said the first cloudburst occurred in Rajgarh around 12:30 a.m. “Two houses and a school building were hit. As a result, four people lost their lives, while one remains missing. A rescue operation is underway,” he said. District authorities have deployed teams to provide relief to survivors and assess the damage.
The second incident was reported from Mahore tehsil of Reasi district around 3 a.m., where a family of seven was buried alive after a cloudburst triggered a landslide in Badder village.
Sub-divisional police officer, Mahore, DSP Waqar Yunus, said, “The cloudburst triggered a landslide that swept away a house in Badder village, burying the entire family of seven members. The bodies remained buried for four hours till they were retrieved later in the morning.”
The victims were identified as Nazir Ahmed, his wife Wazira Bano, and their five sons aged 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. Officials said the tragedy has devastated the remote village, where residents joined the rescue teams in retrieving the bodies.
Search and relief operations were continuing in both districts till late Saturday.
