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Search continues for 124 Pakistani soldiers feared dead in avalanche

The Pakistan army has launched an operation to rescue 124 soldiers buried after a deadly avalanche swept through a remote mountain valley in disputed Kashmir on Saturday.

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Pakistan troops were searching for more than 100 comrades buried by an avalanche that swept through a remote mountain valley in disputed Kashmir yesterday on Saturday.

Teams including sniffer dogs were deployed to find signs of life beneath the snow which smashed into a base along the heavily militarised border between Pakistan and India at dawn.

Doctors and paramedics have also been taken to the region.

They face a race against time to find survivors.

Rescuers will have to battle the mountainous terrain, freezing temperatures and crippling altitudes of the Siachen glacier. At 22,000ft it is known as the world's highest battlefield, where the risks of exposure, altitude sickness, frostbite, avalanches and hidden crevasses are far more deadly than enemy bullets.

A spokesperson for the Pakistan army said that bulldozers were still trying to reach the site of the disaster and that none of the missing soldiers had been found.

Major General Athar Abbas told The Sunday Telegraph that 117 soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry, including a colonel, were buried when a massive avalanche hit their base.

"It is extremely unusual to have an avalanche in that area," he said. "The base has been there for 20 years without this happening before and it struck early in the morning, which may have caught the men unawares."

Analysts said the tragedy would raise questions about why so many Pakistani soldiers were risking their lives on a slab of ice with little strategic importance.

But Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, said that the incident would not "undermine the high morale of soldiers and officers".

Kashmir has been split between Pakistan and India since 1947. Some estimates suggest the two countries have as many as 20,000 troops based in mountains above the Siachen glacier, in the Karakoram range of the Himalayas.

They clashed over the region in 1984 and have maintained a heavy presence ever since - despite the financial and human cost of operating under such conditions. The cold, altitude and avalanches have claimed more lives than gunfire, which has fallen silent since a 2003 truce was agreed.

Talat Masood, a retired army general, said that with President Asif Ali Zardari due to visit India on Sunday, the tragedy might focus attention on the futility of maintaining a large military presence in the region and lead to something positive.
 

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