More than 100 laborers at a hydroelectric project were feared dead after being swept away in flash floods caused by heavy rain in a northern Indian state yesterday.

　　"The estimate so far is that 100, or more than 100, people may have been killed," said Veerbhadra Singh, chief minister of Himachal Pradesh.

　　The victims were mostly migrant workers from Nepal and the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh working at a hydroelectric plant being built on a rivulet in a remote hill area, Singh said.

　　"There was a cloudburst in the higher mountains. The rivulet filled with water and washed away a lot of tents where the laborers were sleeping," said A.K. Puri, the state's police chief. Puri said police and rescue workers had recovered 16 bodies, but expected to find many more.

　　If Singh's estimate is correct, it would raise the toll from six weeks of monsoon rains in South Asia to nearly 400. Flooding and landslides from the heavy rains have damaged homes, crops, killed cattle and stranded some 7 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal since mid-June.