Seven workers have been killed and two are missing after water and debris surged into a tunnel being built for a hydropower project in the Indian Himalayas, with at least 14 others injured in the incident.
Twenty-two men were inside the tunnel at Pipalkoti, in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state in northern India, when the water rushed in at about 7pm on Thursday, according to the State Disaster Response Force. Twenty-one have been brought out, seven of them dead, while the fate of the other two was not immediately known.
The strong current swept many of the men towards the tunnel's exit, according to reports from the site. Those injured are being treated at a nearby hospital.
"This is a tunnel under construction for a hydropower project," the district magistrate, Gaurav Kumar, said. "Around 6.30pm, a significant amount of debris and water surged into the tunnel."
The tunnel is being dug for the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation, a state-owned company that operates dams and power stations across the Himalayas.
Soldiers from the Indian army, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the national and state disaster response forces and the Central Industrial Security Force were sent to the site, along with district teams and local police, and worked through the night to reach the men.
Chamoli has had heavy rain for several days. On Monday a metal bridge in the Niti valley, in the same district, was ripped from its foundations by a torrent of muddy water and pushed towards the riverbank, an event captured on video.
The chief minister of Uttarakhand, Pushkar Singh Dhami, ordered the rescue to be carried out on a war footing and said he had been taking real-time updates from senior officers.
"I spoke to the injured workers admitted to hospital; their condition is stable," he said. "I have also informed the chief ministers of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh that their residents, those injured or involved in the incident, are receiving treatment here."
The men came from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, states in eastern and central India from which large numbers of labourers travel for construction work.
The local member of the state assembly, Lakhpat Butola, called it a deeply tragic incident and said the administration's priority was supporting the rescue teams.
Several parts of India have been flooded in recent weeks, especially around the Himalayas. Floods in the northeastern state of Assam have killed at least 103 people so far, a disaster scientists said was made worse by unregulated construction and deforestation.
Uttarakhand, the northern Himalayan state, has seen a series of disasters at hydropower sites in the mountains. In February 2021, part of a glacier came away above the Rishiganga project in the same district and sent a wall of water and rock down the valley, killing about 200 people, most of them workers at two power schemes.
In November 2023, 41 men were trapped for 17 days in a road tunnel at Silkyara in the state before they were finally rescued.