Hopes for Chitral avalanche survivors fade

CHITRAL: A search operation is still under way to find the five missing students and two others hit by avalanche late Saturday night in the remote Susum area of Chitral.

Chitral Scouts Commandant Col Nizamud Din told The Express Tribune that there were little hopes for survivors and that they were trying to find bodies. He said NDMA experts would reach the site on Tuesday to recover the bodies.

So far, residents, district administration and paramilitary troops were digging with shovels in three to four feet deep snow to find the victims, he said.

Col Nizam said that on the day of the incident, one student was rescued on time, but he was still in a state of shock.

Susum is around 40km north of Chitral town. On Saturday, a massive avalanche fell on a group of schoolchildren returning home after exams.

“The bodies of a pupil and a passerby have been found so far and we have now no hope of finding any survivor among the seven people who are still buried under the avalanche,” local government official Mazhar Ali Shah told AFP.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2016.