A 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Afghanistan border jolted parts of northern India and ultimately it causes the incident today. Total 3 soldiers were killed and one injured after the avalanche in the Machil sector in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district. Actually, the avalanche hit an army post of twenty-one Rajput around 4:00 pm in Machil. The avalanche struck 2 days after a 24-hour avalanche warning was issued in the area in several districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The warning was issued on Wednesday, shortly after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake on the Tajikistan & Afghanistan border jolted parts of north India.
This is not the first incident in that area. There is a list of several similar incidents which causes a fatality. Last month in December 2017, total eleven people were killed after a vehicle was hit by an avalanche in Kupwara. The gang of people including a one-year-old baby was traveling by the vehicle through the road in the area. There are a number of similar examples in that area. An engineer of Border Roads Organization was also hit by a huge avalanche in that area. He was recovered but he could not be revived ultimately.
Earlier, last year in December 2017, another 5 soldiers were killed after a medium snow avalanches had struck at 2 different places along the Line of Control (LoC) in Gurez and Naugam area. In January 2017 total twenty army men including 4 officers were killed in an avalanche in Machil, Uri, and Gurez, area, which is close to the Line of Control (LoC) in northern Kashmir.
In this incident, three army personnel were killed and another one critically injured after the army post was hit by the avalanche in the north Kashmir’s Kupwara district in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to army men, a post was hit by the snow avalanche and four army men were trapped under the snow. Although rescue team immediately reached the site and launched the rescue operation after the avalanche struck, army’s Avalanche Rescue Teams (ARTs) could not save all of them. Only one of them could be retrieved in injured condition. Rests of them were already dead. The official said the ARTs rescue team retrieved the bodies of three dead soldiers.
Immediately after the rescue operation, the injured army man has been sent to an army hospital in Srinagar for specialized treatment and as per report now he is quite OK.
The upper section of the valley which is close to Line of Control (LoC), are really vulnerable to snow avalanches during every winter. It has become a daily routine of incidents in the area. No one knows till date how to avoid that. The only news is being recorded to count the number of casualties.
