IAF chopper rescues five flood-hit people

An IAF Mi-17 chopper on Monday rescued five people stranded in flash floods for the last two days in a village near Kota in Rajasthan.

The IAF chopper took off from its home base in Jodhpur and rescued the five villagers from Pipalda village near Kota and dropped them safely to the nearby Sawai Madhopur town, IAF officials said here.

The Mi-17 chopper was called in by the civil administration after local authorities failed to rescue the stranded villagers, they said.

This year, the IAF has been heavily involved in rescue operations in several places in the country including Uttarakhand where it had launched its largest-ever rescue mission.

It flew over 2,500 sorties and rescued over 15,000 people from the higher reaches of the hill state.