Heavy rains hamper Indian landslide recovery with scores still buried

Heavy rain has hampered the recovery operation at the remote site of a landslide in India that has claimed the lives of at least 25 people, and trapped many more.

Rescue teams had already toliled through the night using floodlights mounted on jeeps and eathmoving vehicles to pull eight injured people out of the mud and wreckage, Vitthal Banot, a disaster management official said. He added that 25 bodies had so far been recovered. As many as 130 others are feared buried.

The first batch of emergency workers arrived Wednesday afternoon at the scene 37 miles from the western city of Pune, but rain, mud and poor communications have been hampering rescue efforts, said Sandeep Rai Rathore, inspector general of the national disaster force. 

India’s recently elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi said one of his top deputies in his Bharatiya Janata Party, Rajnath Singh, would visit the region.

“Loss of lives in landslide in Pune dist. is saddening,” Modi tweeted. “Spoke to Rajnath ji & he would be travelling to Pune to take stock of the situation.”

Seven teams of 42 rescue workers each were being sent to help, said the disaster force's deputy inspector general of operations, S.S. Guleria.

"The area is quite a difficult terrain," Rathore said, adding that rescuers were trying to determine how many people had been caught in the landslide. "The figure, it could be up to 150."

Rescuers are trying to help residents of Ambegaon, a village in Pune district in Maharashtra state, according to Alok Avasthy, a national disaster response force commander. About 40 houses have been buried.

"It's surrounded by hills and the area is very remote and rural, so it's taking us time to get there," Avashty said.

Rainy season downpours, though vital for India's agriculture, often bring disaster.

Unprecedented rain in June last year wreaked havoc across India's Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, causing rivers and lakes to burst their banks, inundating towns and villages and killing thousands of people.

Badly managed hydro-power projects were partly to blame for those floods, an environment ministry panel said in April.

In May, another landslide killed at least 2,000 in a remote region of Afghanistan. 

Al Jazeera and wires