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Kashmir Avalanche Death Toll Hits 229
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A Kashmiri woman begs for money after the devastating snow slides. (Reuters)
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SRINAGAR,
India,
February 23, 2005
(IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Rescuers braved icy Himalayan
winds Wednesday, February 23, to search for survivors of devastating
snowslides that triggered avalanches in
Kashmir, killing at least 229 people.
The
army rushed snowmobiles, nurses and doctors to snowbound hamlets,
transporting the injured to the nearest hospitals,
India's army chief Joginder Singh told reporters in
Srinagar, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Singh
is accompanying
India's Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the leader of
India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, to
Kashmir
for an aerial survey of the devastated hamlets.
“We
will also establish temporary camps so that people are shielded from
the cold,” the general said.
He
added that soldiers from the army's high altitude warfare and
mountaineers were being deployed to help rescue survivors of the
avalanches which swept away a string of villages in Anantnag district
at the weekend.
“The
rescue operation is continuing despite cold winds and teeth-chattering
cold," said a police official in Qazigund,
80 kilometers
(
50 miles
) south of
Srinagar, where relief operations are being coordinated.
Kashmir
valley's top administrator Khursheed Ganai told reporters in Srinagar
that a total of 179 bodies had so far been recovered from the Anantnag
district, about
10 kilometers
(six miles) short of the villages buried by the avalanches.
Police
said another 50 people were killed in snowslides in the neighboring
districts of Doda and Poonch, taking the overall death toll since the
weekend to 229.
The
defense minister said the casualties may increase “because many of
the bodies have yet to be recovered.”
Authorities
in
Srinagar
overnight restored power supply to hospitals, government buildings and
a few suburbs but most of the
Kashmir
valley remained without electricity for the sixth consecutive day.
The
weekend snowfall, the heaviest in two decades, severed telephone and
power lines and closed all roadlinks inside the valley.
Heartbreaking
Scenes
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Kashmiris wait for cooking gas as they sit on empty cylinders in Srinagar. (Reuters) |
Ghulam
Hussain, 45, said his village, Watlingo, had been flattened by the
snow.
“I
have lost my wife, four children and mother in this catastrophe,”
Hussain told AFP.
He
said the avalanche hit early Saturday afternoon, flattening the house.
“I
and my father survived. I don't know how,” he said.
An
AFP photographer who hiked four hours through deep snow to reach the
village said it looked like a ghost town with houses either totally or
partially destroyed.
Bodies,
including those of children and women, were lying outside on the snow
and inside some houses.
“We
are burying the dead en masse. Men separately and women separately,”
said Raj Wali, 65.
Wali
lost his two daughters aged five and 15 when the wall of snow smashed
into the village.
“My
brother and I survived as we were not in the house,” Wali said,
adding that every family in the village had suffered. “Every house
is in mourning.”
Officials
said they were losing hope of finding any of the missing alive, but
were reluctant to speculate on how many people are still missing.
Civilian volunteers say they believe the number to be around 300.
A
senior police officer in Anantnag said some areas were still cut off
and had yet to be reached by rescuers.
He
said some 1,200 homes and other non-residential buildings had been
flattened by the snowslides and more than 50,000 fruit trees destroyed
in Anantnag district alone.
The
Indian army has warned that fresh avalanches are possible as the snow
begins to melt and has urged mountain-dwellers to flee their homes.
The
killer avalanches is a grim reminder of monster
tsunamis triggered by an undersea earthquake in December, slamming
into vast swathes of Asia and killing some 300,000 people with
Indonesia taking the brunt of it.
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