For some, the tragedy is never ending

At least 228 people still missing among them 153 belong to AJK

MUZAFFARABAD: Muhammad Bashir's voice has lingering traces of hope as he describes his son Yasir, his red cheeks and shining black hair. Yasir, then 13-years old, had gone missing after the 2005 earthquake.

"I still believe my son will come back, but I don't know how many more years it will take [to find him],"Bashir laments. The devastating earthquake  had killed more than 73,000 people, wounded 128,000 and left around 3.5 million homeless- including over 200 missing.

"Whenever I see class-fellows of my missing son," Bashir recounts of the eight-grader who attended Govt Pilot High School, " I think Yasir too would have been going to university, if he was around."

Gulnaz poses holding a photograph of her daughter Nazish Naz, who went missing in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. PHOTO: AFP

For the father of the ninth-grade student Bushra Mir, who went missing after the earthquake, every second has been like a year for him.

Read: Did we learn anything from the 2005 quake?

"Every day haunts us and every second has been like a year for us since our daughter went missing in the 2005 earthquake," he cries, adding that "I think my daughter is still around me. She was cute, caring and loving."

Bashir says he has searched for his 15-year-old daughter at orphanages, hospitals and welfare centres in Punjab and AJK but with no luck.

Nazish Naz, who had been reluctant to go to school, telling her elder sister the day felt cursed. Less than an hour after she left home, disaster struck. Naz's family is still hoping for her return.

Other than her lone photograph showing her injured in a hospital which appeared in a newspaper shortly after the disaster, there has been no trace of her: She has simply vanished.

Parents of Nazish Naz, who went missing in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, arrive to offer prayers for their daughter at a shrine in Mera Tanolian in Muzaffarabad. PHOTO: AFP

Her family is among hundreds of relatives struggling to trace loved ones lost in the earthquake with as many as 228 people in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and AJK still listed as missing.

Search is still going on

The focal person for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Najmul Saqib tells The Express Tribune that they have not given up on a search for the missing men, but efforts are limited.

"The campaign to trace the remaining 228 missing persons is not over, however, we are now dependent on hospitals and other private sources," Saqib explains. He says that since 2005, they have managed to locate 348 missing persons. Of these, 79 were found to have died, while 269 were reunited with their families.