By Sakshi Dayal
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – At least 25 people remain trapped under snow after an avalanche struck the Indian Himalayan mountain state of Uttarakhand, authorities said on Friday, following recent heavy snowfall in the region.
The avalanche occurred near a highway in the state’s Chamoli region, adjoining Tibet, and less than 5 km (3 miles) from the Hindu temple of Badrinath, which is visited by hundreds of thousands of devotees every year.
It struck a labour site of the federal Border Roads Organisation (BRO), where eight containers and one shed, with 57 workers inside, were buried under the snow, according to an Indian army statement.
Five of the containers had been located, the statement said, and the search for the remaining three was ongoing.
At least 32 workers had been rescued, Chamoli’s District Administrator Sandeep Tiwari told news agency ANI on Friday evening, and there was no indication of any casualties.
Rain and snowfall, however, were limiting mobility and the use of helicopters, he said.
Members of the army were seen carrying a person on a stretcher through knee-deep snow, in images shared on X, as more snow continued to fall.
India’s weather department expects “heavy to very heavy” snowfall – defined as at least 12 centimetres (5 inches) of snow – over the state through Friday and to then subside “significantly”.
Two teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) deployed for the rescue operation were also facing delays in reaching the workers, senior NDRF official Mohsen Shahedi told Reuters.
Uttarakhand, which is located in the Himalayas, is increasingly prone to flash floods and landslides due to rising global temperatures, and environmentalists have urged a review of power projects and other development work there.
At least 80 people were killed and more than 200 reported missing when a part of a glacier in the state broke away in February 2021. An avalanche in 2022 killed 16 people.
(Reporting by Sakshi Dayal and Sudipto Ganguly, additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma and Shivam Patel, writing by Sakshi Dayal; Editing by YP Rajesh, Rachna Uppal and Alex Richardson)
