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Kashmir avalanches kill 175, more missing
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-02-22 21:48

More than 300 people were missing in Kashmir after avalanches over the weekend swept away hundreds of homes in the heaviest snowfall in over four decades, officials said on Tuesday.

Stranded Indian soldiers wait to be airlifted out of a military base in Rangreth, on the outskirts of Srinagar, February 21, 2005. [Reuters]

The death toll from the disaster mounted to 175 as rescuers found more bodies, including those of 26 children and 18 women in villages smashed by walls of snow in the worst-hit southern part of Kashmir.

A fresh avalanche on Tuesday killed three people in Anantnag district, and military officials urged people living in the higher reaches of the Himalayan region to move out before snow storms claimed more lives.

"With the sun coming out, the number of avalanches will increase. Every hill has become loaded with snow in such a manner that even the walking of a man can trigger it," Indian Major General Raj Mehta told reporters.

Many villages remained inaccessible because of the weather, and officials expect the death toll to rise as rescuers reach remote villages hit by the worst snowfall since 1962.

The army, which has a large presence in Jammu and Kashmir because of a 16-year-old separatist revolt, said about 70 feet of snow had fallen in some sectors of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

"Soldiers are battling unprecedented degrees of difficulty never before experienced in the last 42 or 43 years," Mehta said.

"Every half an hour they have to go and remove snow falling on their bunkers. Otherwise they would be buried alive."

Indian military helicopters flew food packets on Tuesday to soldiers and civilians stranded on a snowbound mountain highway which connects the Kashmir Valley with the rest of India.

Food and blankets were also dropped to snowbound villages located at altitudes of 9,000 feet to 10,000 feet.

Some 300 people, mostly soldiers, were inside the 2.5 km long Jawahar tunnel on the highway where they had taken shelter from heavy snowfall and avalanches late last week.

Fresh vegetables were flown to Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar where residents have complained of shortages of cooking gas, vegetables and milk.

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