Over 300 Israelis rescued from flood-hit villages of Himachal Pradesh

The search team rescued 125 more Israeli tourists from Kasol village in Kullu district on Saturday

New Delhi: With relief operations in full swing in flood-hit Himachal Pradesh, over 300 Israeli tourists were successfully tracked and evacuated from the state.

Taking to Twitter, Ambassador of Israel to India Naor Gilon informed that no Israeli casualties took place. “Rescue teams from #Israel with embassy staff blessing the successful tracing and evacuation (when required) of more than 300 Israeli tourists from #HimachalPradesh flood-hit areas. Luckily, no Israeli casualties. Our hearts are with the victims of this disaster,” Gilon said.

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On July 10th, the NDRF team, along with Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Home Guard personnel, embarked on the rescue mission. The search team rescued 125 more Israeli tourists from Kasol village in Kullu district on Saturday.

The Israeli embassy also sent its team to locate its nationals, which lost road connectivity due to the landslides triggered by the heavy rain last weekend.

Earlier, on Wednesday, the officiating Director General of Police (DGP), Satwant Atwal Trivedi, said that out of those 2000 rescues, 40 were foreign nationals, including 14 Russian citizens in Kasol.

Some of them were rescued from other parts of the Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti districts of the state. “Everybody in Kasol, including the foreigners, is safe. 40 foreigners contacted us, and there could be others in other parts of the state, but all are safe. All 14 Russians are safe, they have been brought down from Kasol, and Australians were also, and they were connected to their people in Delhi. To give you a breakup on a national basis, there were Spanish, Russian, Israeli, Romanian, German, Australian, one American, and two Irish ladies in Chandratal. They are also being rescued,” Trivedi confirmed to ANI.

The Kullu district police found 13 bodies in the Beas River on Wednesday. “13 bodies have been found, and the identification is yet to be made,” said Trivedi. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh is conducting a virtual review at the Secretariat regarding the situation arising due to the monsoon in the state.

As per data available from the Himachal Pradesh Disaster Management Authority, over 40,000 tourists were stranded in flood-hit regions of the state.

The DGP said that rescue and relief work is being done after the rain and floods. She said that over 1,500 people contacted the Himachal Pradesh Police who were stranded in different locations.

She said that over 2,000 people were rescued from the Kasol area of the Kullu district until Wednesday afternoon; others in the Lahaul-Spiti district are being moved out of the region.