A 12- year-old lady was discovered alive after she was buried under snow for 18 hours when an avalanche in Pakistan- administered Kashmir swallowed up the household home.
Samina Bibi recalled shrieking and yelling for help as she lay trapped in a space under the snow.
” I believed I would pass away there,” she told Reuters news company from a health center bed in Muzaffarabad, where she and dozens of other injured individuals were receiving treatment after being airlifted out of the avalanche area.
Rescuers have actually been racing against time to reach scores of people believed still to be caught inside their homes, buried under avalanches triggered by heavy snowfall.
The worst afflicted area was Kashmir’s Neelum Valley, where the 21 bodies were obtained, stated Ahmad Raza Qadri, a minister for disaster management.
He said that given that Sunday, 76 people have been eliminated in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in weather-related incidents.
A wonder
For Samina’s mother, Shahnaz Bibi, who lost a kid and another daughter, the rescue was nothing short of a wonder. After being pulled out of the snow earlier, Shahnaz stated she and her sibling, Irshad Ahmad, had quit hope of discovering Samina alive.
Samina stated she might not sleep while she waited to be rescued. Her leg was fractured and blood was oozing from her mouth.
” We didn’t hear a rumble,” Shahnaz stated, remembering the moments prior to the avalanche buried the three-floor home where she and her household were sheltering with others from the village. A minimum of 18 of them passed away.
Samina and her family were huddled around a fire when the avalanche hit. “It happened in the blink of an eye,” said Shahnaz.
Pakistan’s National Catastrophe Management Authority said the overall number of deaths in snow-hit locations across the country over the previous number of days was now 100.
More heavy snowfall is expected in the region from Friday.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, the scenario was going back to normal on Wednesday, following days-long heavy snowfall, rains and flash floods that killed 39 people and damaged about 300 houses given that Sunday.
