Avalanche tragedy: Rescuers find two more bodies at Giari

Funeral prayers for Muhammad Hussain offered near Skardu.

ISLAMABAD: Rescuers have recovered two more bodies on the 51st day of the rescue operation at Giari where an avalanche buried 139 people at a high-altitude army camp more than seven weeks ago, the military said on Sunday.

According to the military’s media wing, a NADRA team has arrived in Skardu to help identify the bodies.

Meanwhile, the funeral prayers for sepoy Muhammad Hussain, whose body was found a day earlier, were offered with full military honours in Stak Chan village near Skardu.

One of the recovered bodies has been identified as sepoy Rashid’s. He hailed from Pulandri area of Azad Kashmir, according to the ISPR.

A huge wall of snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier base in the early hours of April 7, smothering an area of one square kilometre.

Rescuers have been digging in tunnels in the hard mass of snow and ice that hit the battalion headquarters of the 6th Northern Light Infantry to try to recover the bodies of the 129 soldiers and 11 civilians buried.

“The body of one more soldier was found today from the avalanche site. It was recovered from a place which is very close to a site from where the first body was found yesterday,” the military said in a statement.

A third body spotted in the same area was also being recovered, the military added.

Several foreign teams have visited the site, which is 4,000 metres up in the mountains, to assist the rescue efforts.

(WITH ADDITIONAL INPUT FROM AFP, APP)

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2012.