Srinagar, Aug. 8: Rescuers found more bodies as they dug through trampled homes in Leh following Friday night’s cloudburst, raising the toll to 150. Most of the over 400 missing people are also feared dead and among them are 28 Army soldiers who are reported to have been washed away in flash floods.
Latest reports from Leh said 33 soldiers including three JCOs of 15 Bihar regiment, deployed along the Line of Control (LoC) down the Siachen glacier are reported to have been washed away to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. The Army authorities have sought help from their Pakistani counterparts to trace them.
The jawans were manning a forward military post near Turtuk, the last village on the Indian side of the LoC salvaged from the Pakistanis in the 1971 war, and are feared to have been swept away by the swollen waters of Shyok river on the same night when a cloudburst struck Leh. Earlier, two soldiers’ bodies were found by rescuers near the riverbank.
Scores of Army and ITBP soldiers are also missing from Leh and neighbouring areas including Nubra. “The search for missing soldiers in Nubra valley is on but we are facing difficulty and, in fact, the search has been hampered because the slush is almost 28 feet high,” an Army official said. He added that it was hard to say what their chances of survival are. Thirty-one jawans of the ITBP whose camp was washed away in flash floods are missing too.
Meanwhile, four J&K policemen, who were part of a massive rescue operation underway in the area, have been killed after they were trampled under the rubble of falling buildings or slipped down the steep and barren hills.