Avalanches killed at least 14 people, 12 from just two families, and forced hundreds more to leave their snowbound villages in the Indian-held part of Kashmir, officials said.
Six members of one family were killed Friday when cascading snow buried their village home in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, said Farooq Khan, a police deputy inspector general. Police rescued a 2-year-old girl, also a member of the family, from the debris, Khan said.
Six members of another family of seven were killed when an avalanche destroyed their house in the village of Peth Halan, local police official Hemant Lohia said. A young male child was rescued from the site, but the age of the child was not immediately clear, he said.
Another woman died after an avalanche struck a village near the frontier dividing the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir, local disaster management official Amir Ali said. The woman’s son and daughter were missing and feared dead, Ali said.
Elsewhere, snow buried and killed a man in a mountain village in another part of Kashmir, said S.P. Pani, the area’s superintendent of police. Pani said the village received about 3.3 meters (11 feet) of snow this week, and the army and police evacuated hundreds of people from the area to shelters in safer places.
On Thursday, an avalanche killed a soldier and two civilians working for the army, officials said.
Frequent rain and heavy snow often trigger winter avalanches in Kashmir, which is divided between neighboring India and Pakistan and claimed by both. They have fought two wars over the territory since their independence from Britain in 1947.