Heavier than usual rains and sudden cloudbursts during this monsoon season kill more than 300 people in recent days.

Cloudbursts are causing chaos in mountainous parts of India and Pakistan, with tremendous amounts of rain falling in a short period of time over a concentrated area.

Anguished Pakistanis searched remote areas for bodies swept away by weekend flash floods as the death toll reached 277 on Monday.

Pope Leo XIV offered prayers and expressed his closeness for the victims of severe flooding that hit Pakistan, India and Nepal. The Pope shared his prayers “for the victims and their families, and for all those who are suffering as a result of this calamity,” Vatican News reported on Aug. 18.

More than 200 people remain missing in one district of north-west Pakistan as a result of devastating monsoon flooding and landslides, an official has said. Flash floods have killed more than 300 people in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in recent days, with most of the deaths recorded in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Officials say rescuers have recovered dozens more bodies from collapsed homes in a northwestern district of Pakistan, bringing the death toll to at least 274, as authorities defended their response to the flooding.

That vote has never been held. India and Pakistan fought another war, in 1965, and a limited conflict, in 1999, over Indian-controlled Kashmir. Insurgency in Kashmir

Rescuers in northwest Pakistan pulled 63 more bodies overnight from homes flattened by landslides and flash floods, raising the death toll from rain-related incidents to at least 220