18 children killed in India school collapse: official

Dehradun: At least 18 children were killed on Wednesday when a school collapsed in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand following a heavy monsoon downpour, a disaster official said.

"A search is on for more as there is speculation that there might have been more people, teachers and others in the school," said Piyush Rautela, who heads Uttarakhand's disaster management agency.

A state minister for relief, Khazan Das, said that eight children have been rescued from the school in Sumgarh, a village in Uttrakhand state.

A state minister for relief, Khazan Das, said that another 10 children and two teachers are missing and believed buried in debris.

Das said the children at the school are aged 6 to 13.

Earlier this month, flash floods triggered by a cloudburst killed at least 175 people in the remote and mountainous Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.