Shimla, August 12, 2021 (PPI-OT):At least 13 people were killed and 60 others feared trapped under debris after several vehicles, including a bus carrying 24 passengers, were hit by a landslide on a highway near Nigulsari in Kinnaur district of the Indian state of in Himachal Pradesh, officials said.

Speaking to media, officials cited eyewitness’s accounts of large boulders tumbling down the mountain side around 12.45 pm and on to highway from Kinnaur to Shimla. Thirteen people have been reportedly killed. At least thirteen others, including the state transport bus’s driver Mahinder Pal and conductor Gulab Singh, have been rescued and taken to a local hospital, they said.

Teams of Indo-Tibetan Border Police, along with units of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), are engaged in rescue operations that continue to be hindered by falling rocks, officials said.

Himachal Pradesh’s Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur said 60 people were feared trapped under the debris. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have assured all help from the Centre. Thakur said that the Army, too, has offered help including the deployment of a helicopter.

Relatives of missing bus passengers approached the local authorities to know about their whereabouts. Most of the victims belong to nearby villages. “A few boulders started rolling down just ahead of the disaster. Sensing trouble, I ran towards the other side and managed to save myself,” a survivor said.

This is the second major natural disaster in Kinnaur in less than a month. Nine people, most of them tourists, were killed by a landslide as boulders fell and hit the vehicle they were travelling in. This monsoon also caused major landslides in the state’s Kangra district, claiming 10 lives. Terrifying videos capturing massive landslides in Sirmaur district are common these days.

Seven people died in the exceptionally high rainfall across the cold desert of Lahaul-Spiti district on July 27-28. Key long and Udaipur subdivision of the district faced 12 incidents of flash flood after a cloudburst, in which the Tozing Nallah’s impact was devastating.

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