Wayanad landslide death toll rises to 6

The death toll following the Wayanad landslide rose to six on Thursday with recovery of three more bodies from the disaster site, district officials said.

The three bodies recovered have been identified as those of migrant workers -- Azharuddin Ansari (surveyor) who hailed from Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh native Rahul Sharma who worked as an engineer and Mohammed Imran an excavator operator from Bihar -- the officials said.

Earlier Kerala Ministers A P Anil Kumar and T Siddique told reporters that one of the bodies was recovered from zone 1 of the search area in the morning and the other from inside the river.


"Searches will be carried out in zone 1 and 2 of the area. Will be focusing search operations near the river also," Anil Kumar said.

Siddique said that postmortem of the bodies will be carried out at the Vythiri Taluk hospital and they will be embalmed at the Kozhikode government medical college hospital.

A landslide had occurred on July 7 at the site of the Anakkompoyil-Meppadi tunnel project for connecting Wayanad and Kozhikode districts.

Now two people remain missing.

Chief Minister V D Satheesan on Wednesday had said that search operations will be given priority.

He had also said that of the 10 persons injured in the incident, three were discharged, four were still hospitalised but stable and three others were in the ICU of whom two were critical.