Kargil avalanche: Rescued soldier stable, search operation for missing jawan intensified

Udhampur: The condition of a missing soldier, who was recovered yesterday after avalanche hit an Army Post located at an altitude of 17500 feet in Kargil Sector of Jammu and Kashmir, has been reported stable during a health bulletin, media reports said on Sunday.

Two soldiers, who were on surveillance duty in an area close to the Line of Control (LoC), were washed away in the avalanche on Thursday night.

Immediate rescue operations were launched in which one soldier was rescued, while the second soldier is still missing.

Rescue operations are currently underway to find the missing soldier.

An avalanche warning was issued earlier for higher areas of Jammu and Kashmir, advising people not to venture out over the next 48 hours.

Last month, 10 soldiers were buried under snow after a major avalanche hit their camp in the Siachen glacier.

On February 3, nine Army Jawans 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.

However, the 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 three days later.