Heavy rains were hampering a search for residents feared buried under piles of debris as the death toll from landslides in India's tea-growing region of Darjeeling reached 38, police said Thursday.

The rains have triggered fresh landslides in the Mirik area where rescue teams were struggling to find those buried in the mud and debris that barreled down slopes on Tuesday night into their homes.

Rescuers were digging through piles of debris to search for survivors after landslides triggered by heavy rain killed at least 30 people across India's famed tea-growing region of Darjeeling, police said Wednesday.

Some half a dozen people were feared trapped under mounds of mud at the remote Tingling tea estate in Mirik area where rescue teams were struggling to reach those buried.

Relief workers were Saturday trying to reach residents stranded by floods in India's western Gujarat state triggered by torrential rains that have so far claimed 55 lives, officials said.

Officials were providing food and water to the people affected by flash floods in the Saurashtra region, as thousands fled to safer areas following the rains that started Wednesday.

Italy said Friday it had initiated international arbitration proceedings in the case of two of its marines facing trial in India for the 2012 killing of two fishermen.

The unilateral move by the Italian government follows the failure of direct negotiations with the Indian government aimed at resolving a case which has severely strained diplomatic relations between the two countries, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Indian prosecutors said Tuesday they have formally charged eight men over the rape of an elderly Catholic nun that shocked the country earlier this year.

The nun, who is in her 70s, needed surgery after the attack in March when a gang of robbers broke into the convent school where she lived in the town of Ranaghat in eastern West Bengal state.

The death toll from India's latest case of mass bootleg liquor poisoning rose to 100 Monday as authorities in Mumbai pledged to crack down on the illicit trade.

Dhananjay Kulkarni, deputy police commissioner in the western Indian city, announced the updated toll in Mumbai's deadliest incident of alcohol poisoning for over a decade.

Two suspected rebels and a civilian were killed in a gun battle in Indian Kashmir that lasted more than 15 hours, police said on Monday.

The shooting began Sunday when government forces cordoned off a village on a tip-off that armed militants were hiding there.

A passenger bus on Saturday plunged off a mountain road into a gorge in northern India, killing 14 people, a local official said.

The accident happened when the driver lost control, veering the bus off the road and into the canyon below in Almora district, some 370 kilometers (230 miles) from Dehradun, capital of the state of Uttarakhand.

A fire in a hotel in a northern Indian town on Friday killed at least 10 people after breaking out overnight when guests were asleep, officials said.

Fire fighters battled for more than an hour to bring the blaze under control after it erupted in a restaurant and quickly spread to the adjoining Goyal Hotel in the state of Uttar Pradesh, an official said.

Indian Kashmir was largely under curfew on Friday with top separatist leaders detained to halt a planned protest march over a series of recent killings in the restive territory.

Hundreds of police and paramilitary soldiers patrolled the main city of Srinagar and schools and shops were closed, while there were similar restrictions in other towns in the Kashmir Valley, police officers and residents said.