Three people were killed, and 17 went missing, after a major landslide hit shanty shops located on the side of the mountain at Gaurikund — the base camp for Kedarnath temple — late on Thursday night and the early hours of Friday. Triggered by heavy rainfall, the landslide is the biggest accident on the Kedarnath route since the flash floods that left over 6,000 dead a decade ago.
Nandan Singh Rajwar, district disaster management officer, told The Hindu that rescue operations started in the wee hours of Friday and continued till late afternoon. “The team of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) managed to recover three bodies till 4 p.m. on Friday, while 17 people are still missing. We had to halt the rescue operations due to rains and unavailability of light after sunset,” he said.
