• Hillsides collapsed after heavy rainfall hit Kerala on Monday.
• Nearly 350 families lived in the affected region, state officials say.
  
• India's weather office predicts more rain throughout the day.
  

At least 73 people have been killed Tuesday as a result of landslides that swept through tea estates in southern India's Kerala state on Tuesday, authorities said.

Hillsides collapsed after heavy torrential rainfall hit the state on Monday and sent rivers of mud, water and boulders onto the homes of workers and villagers, resulting in severe landslides that have left several people missing.

Most of the victims in the Wayanad district of Kerala, a state renowned as one of India's most popular tourist destinations, were estate workers and their families who were asleep at the time in makeshift tents, Reuters reported.

Television visuals showed relief personnel working amid uprooted trees and flattened tin structures as boulders lay strewn at the site with muddy water gushing through.

While more than 70 people have been killed, the state chief minister's spokesman, P.M. Manoj, said that "it is difficult to establish a proper count as many body parts have been spotted in the river."

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

Army engineers were roped in to help build an alternate 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.

The weather office said there was extremely heavy rainfall over north and central Kerala so far on Tuesday, with more rain predicted through the day.

Tuesday's landslides are the worst disaster there since 2018 when heavy floods killed almost 400 people.

"We fear the gravity of this tragedy is much more. Rescue operations are being carried out by various agencies on a war footing," state cabinet minister M B Rajesh said.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who won the recently-contested general election from Wayanad, but resigned as he was also elected from his family bastion in the north, said he had spoken to the state chief minister to ensure coordination with all agencies.

"The devastation unfolding in Wayanad is heartbreaking," he said in a message on X. "I have urged the union government to extend all possible support"