Floods and landslides kill over 30 in Indian Kashmir

At least 32 people are dead in flash floods caused by torrential rains in a remote, mountainous village in Indian-controlled Kashmir, a top disaster management official says.

Mohammed Irshad said rescue teams scouring the devastated Himalayan village of Chositi brought at least 100 people to safety.

He said initial estimations suggested at least 50 others were still missing.

India's deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, said the floods were triggered by a cloudburst in Jammu and Kashmir's Chositi area and "could result in substantial casualty".

Chositi is a remote Himalayan village in Kashmir's Kishtwar district and is the the last village accessible to motor vehicles on the route of an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountainous shrine.

Pilgrims are also feared to be affected by the disaster.

Officials said the pilgrimage had been suspended and more rescue teams were on the way to the area.

Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, New Delhi's top administrator in Kashmir, offered condolences for the loss of life and said he had directed personnel from India's military and paramilitary forces, as well as police and disaster management officials, to strengthen rescue and relief operations.

Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in India's Himalayan regions.

Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, affecting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.

Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years partly due to climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.