One soldier feared dead as avalanche hits Army post in Kargil

Srinagar: One Army jawan is feared dead while another has been rescued after they were swept away by an avalanche in frontier Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir.

The duo were on surveillance duty in an area close to the Line of Control (LoC) when their post at an altitude of 17,500 feet above sea level in the Kargil sector was hit by the avalanche triggered by a mild earthquake on Thursday night.

Defence spokesperson Lt. Col. N.N. Joshi confirming the incident said that the duo was washed away in the avalanche that hit their post at 10.45 pm on March 17. “Immediate rescue operations were launched in which one soldier could be rescued, while the second soldier is still missing,” he said adding that the rescued soldier is stable and recovering at a nearby hospital. “Rescue operation for the missing soldier is underway,” the spokesperson said.

The Army officials here said that though the chances of finding him alive seem to be a remote possibility now, search operation has been intensified as there have been instances when people were found alive days after being swept by avalanche. The most recent example of it is when one of the ten soldiers was pulled out alive after they were buried by an avalanche.

On February 3, nine Army soldiers including a junior commissioned officer were buried alive when a huge wall of frost and snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier, smothering a vast area which also had an Army camp located on it in the southern side of the area at a height of 19,600 feet in eastern Ladakh. A tenth soldier Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, a resident of Betadur village in Dharwad district of Karnataka, was miraculously pulled out alive from an ‘arctic tent’ buried under 25 feet of frost and snow though in critical condition by the rescuers on February 8, six days after the incident. But he too died in Army’s Research and Referral Hospital three days later.