GUWAHATI, India — Flash floods and landslides after torrential monsoon rain over the last two days killed at least 30 people in India’s northeast, officials said Sunday.
State disaster management officials said eight people died in Assam, and nine in Arunachal Pradesh, many of them in landslides as earth loosened by the water slumped into the valley below.
Another five people died in a landslide in the neighboring state of Mizoram, state authorities said.
The officials said that six people lost their lives in Meghalaya and at least two others were killed in the states of Nagaland and Tripura.
Meanwhile, the death toll from a rockfall at a limestone quarry on Indonesia’s Java island rose to 18 on Sunday, with another seven people still missing and feared dead, a military official said.
Workers and heavy equipment were buried when rocks suddenly fell at the mining site in the city of Cirebon in West Java province on Friday morning.
The rockfall also injured at least 12 people.
“Today, we retrieved one more body, which brings the total death toll to 18 people, while seven more people are still missing,” local military chief Mukhammad Yusron told AFP.
“We suspect the missing victims have already died.”
Rescuers have deployed excavators and rescue dogs to search for the remaining victims, Mukhammad said.
He said the search operation was challenging and dangerous due to the unstable structures of the rock.
“We must pay attention to the rescuers’ safety because there have been more rockfalls during the operation.”
