The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The official death toll of the Wayanad landslides has increased to over 170 and is expected to rise further as the army finishes building a steel bridge that will speed up search and rescue efforts in the affected area, Reuters reported.
The news agency cited authorities as saying that 178 people were confirmed dead and that 190 were still missing as of Thursday (August 1) morning.
Mohsen Shahedi, a deputy inspector general in the National Disaster Response Force, told ANI on Thursday that over 200 people had died of the landslides and more than 200 others were injured.
Some unconfirmed figures say the death toll is well over 200.
Authorities told Reuters that nearly 1,600 people were rescued over the last two days, and PTI cites officials as saying that 221 people in total from the disaster-hit areas were admitted to hospital.
Heavy rain triggered a series of landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad district in the early hours of Tuesday, causing the devastation of places surrounding the Mundakkai area.
Following the landslides, homes were destroyed, roads collapsed and vehicles were swept away, with some being sighted hanging from tree trunks.
The army is building a ‘Bailey bridge’, a kind of prefabricated bridge used by military engineering units, to connect Mundakkai with the nearby area of Chooralmala.
A bridge under completion in the affected area. Photo: X/@IASouthern.
This bridge will be used to ferry heavy machinery to Mundakkai that will speed up rescue operations. Some reports indicate it has been completed as of the early afternoon on Thursday.
Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan chaired an ‘all-party meeting’ on Thursday in Wayanad to assess the situation.
Vijayan and Union home minister Amit Shah have disagreed over whether the Kerala government was warned in advance of the possibility that the landslides could occur.
Ecologist Madhav Gadgil told The Hindu that the disaster in was ‘man-made’ and faulted the Kerala government for disregarding the recommendations of an official ecological committee’s report that had designated the affected areas as highly sensitive.
“No development should have taken place in these highly sensitive areas,” Gadgil was quoted as saying.
Former Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi is in Kerala and is scheduled to visit relief camps in the district on Thursday, Congress party sources told PTI.
He is accompanied by his sister Priyanka Gandhi, who will contest the by-election in Wayanad necessitated by Rahul Gandhi’s decision to represent his family bastion of Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh instead of Wayanad following the general election.