DHAKA: Rescuers discovered five bodies on Monday in a river in northern India as they stepped up their search for 24 students washed away in a sudden surge of water released from a dam.

The students were standing on the Beas river’s edge on Sunday evening taking photographs in the northeast Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh when they were hit by a wall of water.

‘In the morning five bodies have been found in the Beas river as rescue teams continue to search downstream,’ senior state government official Pankaj Rai told CNN-IBN news channel, reports The Straits Times.

Soldiers, police and other rescue workers were seen combing the banks of the river, while others in kayaks were paddling slowly downstream, checking around boulders.

BDST: 1716 HRS, JUNE 09, 2014