The death toll from landslides in India’s Kerala has reached 93, with 128 others hospitalised, the southern state’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has told reporters.

“93 dead bodies have been found so far,” Vijayan said on Tuesday. “128 people are under treatment in hospitals… This is one of the worst natural calamities that our state has seen.”

Landslides triggered by relentless monsoon rains struck tea plantations in the district of Wayanad at about 2am on Tuesday (20:30 GMT on Monday), as heavy rain collapsed hillsides and triggered torrents of mud, water and tumbling boulders.

The landslides cut off at least four villages in the district, with rescue efforts hampered by continued rains and blocked roads. Most of the victims were tea estate workers and their families who were asleep in makeshift shelters.

Wayanad is famed for the tea estates crisscrossing its hilly countryside which rely on a large pool of casual labourers for planting and harvest.

Television images showed rescue workers scrambling through uprooted trees and flattened tin structures as boulders lay strewn across the hillsides and muddy water gushed through. Rescuers were being pulled across a stream, carrying stretchers and other equipment to rescue people.

One man was stuck in chest-high mud for hours, TV pictures showed, unable to free himself until he was finally reached by emergency workers. At least 100 families were stranded after the landslides, local Asianet TV reported.

Nearly 350 families lived in the affected region, mostly given over to tea and cardamom estates, and 250 people had been rescued so far, state officials said.

Army engineers were deployed to help build a replacement bridge after the one that linked the affected area to the nearest town of Chooralmala was destroyed, the chief minister’s office said in a statement.

“A small team has managed to cross the bridge across the river and reach [the site] but we will need to send many more to provide help and to start rescue operations,” Kerala chief secretary V Venu told reporters, adding that many people were still missing.

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