Relief teams cut through silt and debris today and rescued 20 workers who had been trapped in a tunnel after a torrential downpour in a remote Indian Himalayan region.
The construction workers, building a tunnel for a power project, were trapped underground when the exit was blocked following a storm yesterday in Kullu district in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, some 300 miles north of New Delhi.
"All 20 people have been saved as there was plenty of oxygen in the kilometre-long tunnel," a police spokesman said.
"Rescue officials and locals used excavation machinery to dig through the mouth of the tunnel. Last night's rain made the excavation work easier."
Dozens of huts where the mostly migrant labourers lived in Barshaini village were washed away after the cloudburst which brought down tonnes of slush and boulders.
The worst floods in 15 years have hit South Asia over the past few weeks, making millions of people homeless and killing more than 1,700, mostly in Bangladesh and eastern India.
After lashing the eastern part of the subcontinent, the monsoon rains moved westwards last week to wreak havoc in the Indian states of Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana.
Flood waters have now receded, but heavy rains continue to pound northwest India. In Bangladesh and eastern India hundreds of thousands of homeless are confined to camps.
Floods destroyed crops in large parts of that farm-dependent region and forced closure of factories, causing losses totalling hundreds of millions of dollars. They also disrupted rail and road links as well as communications and power networks.