‘I just want to find them’: deadly cloudbursts devastate Kashmir’s mountain communities

Rescue teams search for missing people in Murrah village after the cloudburst-triggered landslide. Photograph: Ishtayaq Rasool Increasingly erratic weather patterns due to climate change mean people are losing homes, crops and livestock -administered Kashmir As rain lashed the Pir Panjal mountains before dawn on 19 July, Haji Mohammad Latief stepped outside his home in Murrah, a remote mountain village in Indian-administered Kashmir. His daughter had asked him to move the family’s car to a safer place as the rain got heavier. “I had only just parked it,” Latief recalled. “When I turned around, I saw the water coming.” Minutes later, a cloudburst sent mud, boulders and water crashing down the hillside. Latief, 48, had spent years building the house, where five generations of his Gujjar family lived together. Within minutes, the torrent swallowed it, trapping eight family members inside. He survived only because he had stepped outside. By dawn, everything he had built lay in rubble. When the Guardian reached Murrah four days later, electricity, roads and mobile networks were cut off. Floodwaters had washed away roads and footbridges, leaving the only way into the village a 90-minute walk through rain and landslide debris. Residents carried sacks of flour, cooking gas cylinders and medicines across the broken crossing. Murrah is perched high in the Pir Panjal range above the town of Bafliaz, in Poonch district, about 125 miles (200km) south-west of Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city. The village is home to mostly Gujjars, one of the largest pastoralist communities in the Himalayas, whose livelihoods have long depended on livestock, farming and seasonal migration through the mountains. The hillside remained too unstable for excavators to reach. Soldiers, disaster response teams and local volunteers searched the debris . View image in fullscreen Rescue teams search for missing people in Murrah village after the cloudburst-triggered landslide. Photograph: Ishtayaq RasoolLatief now lives in the house of his brother, Mohd Bashir, just above the landslide. Inside, women gathered to mourn while men quietly received visitors offering condolences. Verses from the Qur’an echoed through the house. “I built that house for my family,” Latief said, holding up pictures of his 16-year-old son Sajjad Ahmed, an aspiring cricketer, whose body was still missing. Days before the disaster, the family recorded videos together. View image in fullscreen A photograph on a phone of 16-year-old Sajjad Ahmed, whose body remains missing Photograph: Ishtayaq RasoolAs mourners gathered, news spread that another body had been found several miles down the river; the room fell silent as another funeral procession passed through the village.