Sikkim flood: 62 missing people found alive; death toll rises to 30

The toll in the flash flood in Sikkim rose to 30 as four more bodies were found on Saturday, while 62 people who were reported missing for the past three days were found alive, a government agency said.

The number of missing people thus came down to 81, the Sikkim State Disaster Management Authority (SSDMA) said in its latest bulletin on Saturday evening.

An inter-ministerial central team will visit the flood-hit state from Sunday to assess the damage due to the natural calamity, Union minister Ajay Kumar Mishra said.

The flash flood triggered by a cloudburst in the early hours of Wednesday affected 41,870 people in four districts of the Himalayan state, with Mangan bearing the brunt of the calamity as a population of around 30,300 were hit by the disaster, it said.

The other three affected districts are Gangtok, Pakyang and Namchi.

Of the 30 deaths - four were in Mangan, six in Gangtok district, 19 in Pakyong and one in Namchi.

The report said that the 19 deceased people in Pakyong included nine army men. Twenty-three soldiers had gone missing on October 3 and one of them was rescued earlier.

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