Indian army teams scour landslide site for remaining dead

BENGALURU, India: Army teams pushed deeper on Friday into Indian tea plantations and villages struck by landslides that killed more than 200 people, working on the assumption that nobody was left alive to rescue.

The number of fatal floods and landslides in India has increased in recent years and experts say climate change is exacerbating the problem.

Days of torrential monsoon rains battered the southern coastal state of Kerala before twin landslides struck before dawn on Tuesday, with more than 500 soldiers among the rescue crews.

Military engineers laid a temporary bridge to speed up search efforts after earlier relying on jury-rigged ziplines to transport recovered bodies over raging waters.

“The assumption is that there is nobody left to be rescued,” a statement issued late Thursday by the Kerala state government said.

Around 8,000 people were taking shelter at emergency camps around the disaster site in Wayanad district.

State health minister Veena George said relief workers in the camps were counselling traumatised survivors and cremating dead animals in an effort to prevent disease outbreaks.

George told AFP on Friday that 199 bodies had been recovered.

But the final toll is certain to be higher, with rescuers reporting the gruesome discovery of more than 100 body parts in flood waters or buried in the muddy earth.

Wayanad is famed for the tea estates that crisscross its hilly countryside and which rely on a large pool of labourers for planting and harvest.