Deadly cloudbursts and flash floods have struck Indian-administered Kashmir and the wider western Himalayas, killing at least 28 people and displacing hundreds of families. In Murrah village in Poonch district — a remote Gujjar pastoral community in the Pir Panjal mountain range — a pre-dawn cloudburst on 19 July triggered a landslide that destroyed multiple homes; rescue teams and soldiers have spent days searching debris and a swollen river for the missing. The disaster has extended across the region: the Manawar Tawi River burst its banks in Rajouri, Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan (the mountainous northern territory bordering China and Afghanistan) saw the Karakoram Highway closed by floods and an artificial lake inundate Hasis village after blocking the Ishkoman River, and crops and roads were damaged as far as the Gurez Valley near the line of control. Scientists and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development warn that rising temperatures are intensifying short, extreme rainfall events across the western Himalayas, compounding glacier melt and placing remote communities — whose livelihoods depend on seasonal farming and migration — at growing risk of both floods and future water scarcity.