About 20 people remained unaccounted near Swat, a hill resort district about 190 kilometers (120 miles) northwest of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, said Ali Rehman, a police emergency official.

Police rescuers and locals in the flood-hit village of Gahel are searching for the missing people.

Twelve bodies have been retrieved from mud and the debris of three homes that were washed away, Rehman said.

Among the dead were two young girls, aged one and 10, and two women, he said. At least two people were injured.

The canal, feeding a small, water-driven electricity generator, flows above Gahel, which was flooded and struck by the mudslide and boulders when a canal embankment burst, another local police official said on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

Pakistan is inundated by monsoon rains for about two months starting in July, a period when flash flooding is common in mountainous northern areas and the flat plains of the eastern Punjab province.