CHOSITI, India (AP) — Flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed over 200 people and left scores others missing in India and Pakistan over the past 24 hours, officials said Friday, as rescuers brought to safety some 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in the neighboring countries.

Pakistan has received higher-than-normal monsoon rainfall this year, triggering floods and mudslides that have killed more than 540 people since June 26.

Aziz Ahmed, a local schoolteacher in Buner, northwestern Pakistan said the thunder accompanying recent torrential rains was so loud he thought the "end of the world had come". Water, rocks and trees were swept down the mountainside after two days of intense monsoon rains,