Leh, Aug 7: Twenty bodies were Saturday pulled out from slush and debris in Leh town ravaged by flash floods, raising the toll to 132 even as rescuers intensified operations in the high altitude terrain to search for 600 missing people.
Six Indian Air Force aircraft carrying relief material, rescue workers and doctors landed here today to provide succour to the people of the region affected by Thursday night’s cloudbursts and freak rains.
“We have recovered 132 bodies so far and at least 370 are injured. The number of missing is being ascertained,” State Police Chief Kuldeep Khoda said, adding the toll may go up.
 Sources fear that the death toll could cross over 500 as several remote villages were yet to be accessed by rescue teams.

THOUSANDS LEFT HOMELESS
 A small village before Choglumsur, which bore the brunt of the incessant rains, was completely wiped out as rescue workers were looking for survivors in the mud slush and debris.
 Gushing waters flattened houses, tossed cars and buses leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. People hit by the flash floods were still coming to grips with the catastrophe.
 Rescuers waded through knee-deep mud to extricate people trapped under debris of collapsed buildings.
 Relief material, including blankets, dry food material, medicine and other immediate requirements of the affected people landed here, a defence spokesman said.
 A contractor told senior state administration officials that 150 labourers employed by him were missing from Shyong village where he had lodged them. The colony was set up along Indus river and the officials feared that many huts would have been washed away in the flash floods.
 “The Indo Tibetan Border Police has retrieved 30 dead bodies. We have rescued 100 victims from under the debris today.  Three relief camps have also been opened up since yesterday,” ITBP spokesperson Deepak Pandey said.
 The General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF) and ITBP are plugging the breaches on Leh Highway, he said.
 The Army has been asked to give an account of local and outstation labourers.
 Authorities said that the Army had suffered losses in Turtuk area. Some of the villages along the Chang La pass, world’s second highest motorable road, were also believed to have been washed away in the torrential rains.
 Union Minister Farooq Abdullah reached the area this morning from Kashmir. Later two of his cabinet colleagues - Ghulam Nabi Azad and Prithviraj Chavan - also reached here after making an earlier unsuccessful attempt to land.
 Home Secretary G K Pillai said in New Delhi that five to six civilian flights are likely to take off for Leh tomorrow to bring back people including foreign tourists stranded there.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 7 Aug 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 7 Aug 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 8 Aug 2010 00:00:00 IST