Rescuers find more bodies in Pakistan landslides
A view of a landslide in Muzaffarabad area of Pakistan. — File Photo by Dawn
MUZAFFARABAD: Rescuers have found three more bodies after landslides in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, officials said Sunday, taking the confirmed death toll to 15, with three people still missing.
A military and civilian rescue operation was launched after heavy snows on Friday triggered two landslides at a remote outpost in the Kel area of the disputed territory near the de facto border with India.
“Despite bad weather and heavy snowfall rescuers found three more bodies yesterday (Saturday) and are searching for three more who are still missing,” local administration official Raja Saqib Muneer told AFP.
“So far 15 bodies have been recovered, including nine soldiers and six civilians.”
In April, 140 Pakistani soldiers were buried when a huge wall of snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier base high in the mountains in Kashmir.
They have all been declared dead, although some of the bodies remain buried.
That tragedy renewed debate about how much sense it made for a country where millions live below the poverty line to maintain outposts in Siachen, dubbed “the world’s highest battleground”, at immense cost when violence had decreased.
And in February, at least 16 Indian soldiers on duty in the mountains of Kashmir were killed when two avalanches swept through army camps.
In Friday’s accident, a wall of mud and snow hit the outpost in the early hours.
An 18-strong team was quickly dispatched to search for the soldiers at the outpost, which is 130 kilometres from Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s main town of Muzaffarabad.
This speaks of professional incompetence of the local military commander who never got education to understand geology and behavior of soil. Why were they deployed on such a slide prone location. Their local commander should be held responsible and be penalized. If local leaders of Siachin accidents were penalized, this incident could have been avoided. Very sad that Army is loosing their trained people. Deployment is taken very light and many factors are ignored in the planning during preparation of plan.
How unfortunate but at any cost defense and security capabilities must be enhanced, in fact the oversize cabinet must be reduced and civil administration budget must be curtailed in order to modernize the Arm Forces.
So Sad (RIP to our Brave Soldiers)
It is still not to late for Pakistan and India to reconcile their differences if any so that our people may come out of the clutches of poverty and deprivation.
Even if we are able to remove differences with India and other neighbors but still strong and modern defense is key for survival and to benefit from economic opportunities.
This is the second time calamity has hit your forces in the highlands.The first lost caused you dozens of lives.Don’t you have geological slope specialists in your army that can point out dangerous slopes to avoid? Every army perched on the snowy highlands have them.