Landslides bury 15 in flood-hit Indian Kashmir

Landslides buried at least 15 people in Indian Kashmir on Monday as hundreds fled their homes after heavy rain triggered flooding around the mountainous region.
Police and witnesses said landslides had buried at least four houses in Chadoora, the worst hit area of the Himalayan region where hundreds were killed in devastating floods last September.
"The ground above the houses just collapsed early this morning and buried them," villager Mohammad Sultan told AFP by telephone from Chadoora, around 15 kilometres (10 miles) west of the main city of Srinagar.
"All of them just suddenly got buried alive. Now they are nowhere to be found," he said.
Regional police chief Javid Mujtaba Gillani said 15 villagers had been in the houses when they were buried and a rescue effort was under way.
But an AFP reporter at the scene said earth-moving machines had been unable to get close because roads had been swept away, leaving police and soldiers armed only with shovels to search for the victims.
One local police officer speaking on condition of anonymity said there was "no hope of finding anyone alive" given the scale of the landslide.
Gillani said 237 families had been evacuated, most of them from Chadoora, after the government issued a flood alert early Monday when the river Jhelum swelled to dangerously high levels.
With more rain forecast for the next few days, authorities set up relief camps in Srinagar and issued an alert asking people living near the river Jhelum to move to safer areas.
- 'Nothing was done' -
Many residents said they did not trust the authorities after devastating floods last September that killed around 300 people, left thousands more homeless and destroyed property and infrastructure worth an estimated $16 billion.
Srinagar resident Rafique Ahmed Wani said he had been forced to leave his home and move in with relatives after being flooded for the second time in less than a year.
"Ever since the last flood we have been asking authorities to repair the embankment of the stream. But nothing was done," he said.
"Now we are flooded again and had to leave our homes," he added, calling the government "callous".
Some complained that Srinagar's drains had not been cleared since the last disaster, causing water to back up and flood the city again.
"My factory was not flooded the last time. But now I have two feet of water on my factory floor. This is all because of water logging," said Ashraf Mir, an industrialist and president of Federation Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kashmir (FCIK).
Local media said the main highway had been closed, while schools were shut for the day and both school and university exams cancelled.
The Kashmir government was heavily criticised for its response to the 2014 disaster, with many parts of Srinagar still cut off days after the floods hit and residents forced to organise their own rescue efforts.
Television footage at the time showed furious locals stoning army rescuers and helicopters carrying relief to flood-hit areas, angry that they had been left to fend for themselves for days after the floods hit.
The then chief minister Omar Abdullah defended his government's handling of the worst floods to hit the mountainous region in a century, saying no one could have foreseen the disaster's magnitude.
But voters later ousted his National Conference party from power in state elections, a result attributed in part to public anger over the handling of the disaster.
About a dozen rebel groups have been fighting Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989 for independence or merger of the territory with Pakistan.
Although violence has declined during the last decade, the fighting has left tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, dead.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from Britain in 1947, and both countries claim the Himalayan territory in full.