J&K: Soldier missing after avalanche hits Ladakh’s Turtuk area
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An Army jawan has gone missing after a military foot patrol was hit by an avalanche in Turtuk area of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday morning.
Another soldier who was also swept away by the avalanche has, however, been rescued though in a critical condition by a team of Army rescuers. Turtuk in Nubra valley of Ladakh at a height of 10,000 feet above sea level is pretty close to the Line of Control (LoC) and was part of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir prior to 1971 war.
“At about 8 am today (Friday), an army patrol in Turtuk area of Ladakh was hit by an avalanche in which two soldiers were buried under the snow. Immediate rescue drills resulted in one soldier being rescued while the second soldier is still missing,” defence spokesman Lt. Col. N.N. Joshi said here. He added, “The rescued soldier is critical and is being taken to the nearest military hospital. All efforts are being made to rescue the missing soldier”.
In a similar incident two Army jawans were swept away when an avalanche triggered by a mild earthquake hit an Army post in Biamah area at an altitude of 17,500 feet above sea level close to LoC in Kargil sector on March 17. One of them Sujit was immediately rescued and is recovering in a military hospital.
But his colleague Sepoy Vijay Kumar K went missing in the mishap and his frozen lifeless body was retrieved from under fifteen feet of snow accumulated in the area of avalanche occurrence three days later by the rescuers. The victim was a resident of Vallaramapuram village of Thirunelvelli district of Tamil Nadu.
On February 3, nine Army soldiers including a junior commissioned officer were buried alive when a huge wall of frost and snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier, smothering a vast area which also had an Army camp located on it in the southern side of the area at a height of 19,600 feet in eastern Ladakh.
A tenth soldier Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, a resident of Betadur village in Dharwad district of Karnataka, was miraculously pulled out alive from an ‘arctic tent’ buried under 25 feet of frost and snow though in critical condition by the rescuers on February 8, six days after the incident. But he too died in Army's Research and Referral Hospital, Delhi three days later.
