Death toll in Manipur landslide in northeast India hits 26

Little hope of finding survivors among 37 people still missing since Wednesday night as more rain and falling boulders hamper rescue.

Fresh rain and falling boulders have hampered rescuers who have so far pulled out 26 bodies from the debris of a landslide that wiped out a railway construction site in northeastern India’s Manipur state, officials said.

Rescue work is expected to continue for a couple of days in rugged hilly terrain in Noney, a town near state capital Imphal, with little hope of finding survivors among 37 people still missing since Wednesday night.

Pankaj Kavidayal, a rescue official, said 21 of the confirmed 26 dead were members of the Territorial Army.

Army personnel had been providing security for the railway officials because of a decades-old armed uprising seeking a separate homeland for ethnic and tribal groups in the area.

More than 250 soldiers, rescuers and police using bulldozers and other equipment were involved in the operation in Noney. They have been cautioned about more landslides reported in the region on Saturday.

Excavators were also used to search for bodies in a river.

Thirteen soldiers and five civilians have been rescued from the debris of the entirely swept away railway station, staff residential quarters and other infrastructure that was being built, Kavidayal said.

The situation at the scene of the landslide was “still serious” with rainfall and bad weather hampering rescue efforts, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh said.

Continuous rainfall over the past three weeks has wreaked havoc across India’s northeast – eight states with a total population of 45 million – and neighbouring Bangladesh.

An estimated 200 people have been killed in heavy downpours and mudslides in states including Assam, Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim, while 42 have died in Bangladesh since May 17. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

Scientists say climate change is a factor behind the erratic, early rains that triggered unprecedented floods. Monsoon rains in South Asia typically begin in June, but torrential rains lashed northeastern India and Bangladesh as early as March this year.

With rising global temperatures due to climate change, experts say the monsoon season is becoming more variable, meaning that much of the rain that would typically fall throughout the season arrives in a shorter period.