Flash floods kill at least 4 and trap others under debris in northern India

LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Flash floods swept away several homes and shops in northern India, killing at least four people and leaving many others trapped under debris, officials said Tuesday.

Local television channels showed flood waters surging down a mountain and crashing into Dharali, a Himalayan mountain village in the Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand state. The flood waters inundated homes, swept away roads and destroyed a local market.

“About a dozen hotels have been washed away and several shops have collapsed,” said Prashant Arya, an administrative officer, adding that rescuers, including the Indian army and police, were searching for the missing.

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said rescue agencies were working “on a war footing.”

“We are doing everything possible to save lives and provide relief,” he said in a statement.

India’s National Disaster Management Authority said it had requested three helicopters from the federal government to assist in the rescue and relief operations as rescuers struggled to access the remote terrain.

Officials have not provided a figure for those trapped or missing.

India’s weather agency has forecast more heavy rains in the region in the coming days. Authorities have asked schools to remain closed in several districts, including Dehradun and Haridwar cities.

Sudden, intense downpours over small areas known as cloudbursts are increasingly common in Uttarakhand, a Himalayan region prone to flash floods and landslides during the monsoon season. Cloudbursts have the potential to wreak havoc by causing intense flooding and landslides, impacting thousands of people in the mountainous regions.

Over 6,000 people died and 4,500 villages were affected when a similar cloudburst devastated Uttarakhand state in 2013.

Experts say cloudbursts have increased in recent years partly due to climate change, while damage from the storms also has increased because of unplanned development in mountain regions.

The flooding in northern India is the latest in a series of disasters that have battered the Himalayan mountains, which span across five countries, in the last few months.

Flooding and landslides as a result of heavy rains and glaciers melting due to high temperatures have killed over 300 people in Pakistan, reported the country’s disaster agency. In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters in Asia — including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes — which was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency Events Database maintained by the University of Louvain, Belgium. These led to losses of over $32 billion, the researchers found.

A 2023 report by Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development found that glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush and Himalayan Mountain ranges. The study found that at least 200 of the more than 2,000 glacial lakes in the region are at risk of overflowing, which can cause catastrophic damage downstream.

Associated Press writer Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru contributed to this report.

Members of India's National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) take a break during a rescue operation from the flooded residential areas along the banks of the river Ganga following heavy monsoon rains, in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Stranded cows look out from a submerged house along the banks of the river Ganga following heavy monsoon rains in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, Aug.5, 2025.(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

A stray dog stands on the roof of a submerged house along the banks of the river Ganga following heavy monsoon rains in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, Aug.5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Members of India's National Disaster Response Force distribute food supplies to stranded residents in a submerged area following heavy monsoon rains along the banks of the River Ganga, in Prayagraj, India Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

An aerial view of submerged houses on the banks of the river Ganga following heavy monsoon rains, in Prayagraj, India, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

LONDON (AP) — The former leader of Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party repeatedly sexually abused two girls in crimes dating back four decades, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday in opening statements at his rape trial.

Jeffrey Donaldson, 63, former leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, pleaded not guilty to one count of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 indecent assault charges involving two alleged victims between 1985 and 2008.

Prosecutor Rosemary Walsh told jurors in Newry Crown Court that the alleged victims complained to police more than two years ago about “difficult and traumatic incidents they say happened when they were children.”

Donaldson resigned as leader of the DUP and quit as a lawmaker in the U.K. Parliament, after he was arrested in March 2024.

Donaldson’s resignation shocked the DUP shortly after the party ended its boycott of Northern Ireland’s semiautonomous government and returned to a power-sharing agreement, after he won concessions on Britain’s post-Brexit trading arrangements with the European Union.

As leader of the DUP between 2021 and 2023, he was the most powerful figure in Northern Ireland’s unionist movement, which seeks to maintain the region’s historic ties to the United Kingdom.

The two alleged victims told police that Donaldson groped them when they were around primary school age, and the older of the two, referred to in court as Complainant B, said that the abuse continued for several years, Walsh said.

Years later, Complainant B said that a meeting was arranged through a church and Donaldson apologized “for what had happened in the past.”

When Donaldson was interviewed by police, he said that it was “unbelievable” that he would have touched her sexually.

His wife, Eleanor Donaldson, has denied charges of aiding and abetting her husband’s alleged offenses, but she's not in court because Judge Paul Ramsey ruled her unfit to stand trial for mental health reasons.

Jurors will decide her case on facts, but she can't be convicted of a crime or punished. The trial is expected to last up to a month.

Jeffrey Donaldson arrives at Newry Crown Court, England, where he and his wife Eleanor Donaldson are accused of historical sexual offences, on Wednesday May 27, 2026. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP)