The bodies of 12 people have been recovered, officials said, as rescuers were looking for an estimated 170 people missing in the Indian Himalayas on Monday.
This includes some trapped in a tunnel, after a part of a glacier broke away sending a torrent of water, rock and dust down a mountain valley.
Sundays violent surge below Nanda Devi, Indias second-highest peak, swept away a small hydro electric project called Rishiganga and damaged a bigger one further downstream the Dhauliganga river being built by state-firm NTPC.
Most of the missing were people working on the two projects, part of many the government has been building deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand state as part of a development push.
As per the information from the local authorities, around 170 people are missing in this accident, Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for the Indo-Tibetan Border Police that is involved in the rescue effort, said.
There had been no voice contact yet with anyone in the tunnel, another official said.
Videos on social media showed water surging through a small dam site, washing away construction equipment and bringing down small bridges.
Everything was swept away, people, cattle and trees, Sangram Singh Rawat, a former village council member of Raini, the site closest to the Rishiganga project, told local media.
Rescue squads were focused on drilling their way through a 2.5km (1.5 miles) long tunnel at the Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower project site that NTPC was building 5km (3 miles) downstream where about 30 workers were believed trapped.
We are trying to break open the tunnel, its a long one, about 2.5 km, said Ashok Kumar, the state police chief.
Some 400 soldiers have been deployed to the site in the remote mountains, state authorities said.
We expect to carry on operations for the next 24 to 48 hours, said Satya Pradhan, the chief of the National Disaster Response Force.
On Sunday, 12 people were rescued from another tunnel that was much smaller. It was not immediately clear what had set off the avalanche at this time of year, with freezing temperatures and no rain. Reuters
