'No hope' as anguished families wait for India landslide bodies

The roar of moving earth startled manual labourer Abdul Kareem and his wife awake, allowing them to make a hasty escape before their Indian village was swallowed by muddy water.

Waiting outside an overwhelmed clinic to watch the regular arrival of bodies salvaged by rescue teams, he had no expectations that his relatives and neighbours had managed to do the same.

"My wife's father can't walk well," he told AFP. "I called my sisters the night before, they were at home and they were caught in it.

"We have no hope. That's how bad the situation is there."

Kareem, 52, believes a dozen or more family members living in the area were among at least 150 killed when landslides hit their remote corner of coastal Kerala state before dawn on Tuesday.

Some homes were buried under mud and debris while others were engulfed by raging flood waters, displaced by tonnes of rock and soil.

Wayanad district, famed for its lush tea plantations, experiences regular floods at the height of the annual monsoon season when torrential downpours carry on for days.

Kareem said he was used to taking shelter temporarily with relatives each year when the nearby Iruvazhinji river bursts its banks and partially floods his home.

"But this year it was horrible," he said.

Kareem and hundreds of other distraught locals kept an anxious vigil overnight outside the clinic at Meppadi, which was transformed into a triage centre for the rescued and a makeshift morgue for recovered bodies.

Crowds thronged ambulances as family members craned their necks to catch sight of a familiar article of clothing or jewellery from underneath sheets draped over the dead.

A team of volunteers worked to clean off the mud and slush coating the remains of those brought inside for identification.

"We were not sure what was going to happen to us," she said. "We're very lucky to be alive."