Agence France Presse

Muzaffarabad, February 12:

Forty-six people were killed in a series of avalanches in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, police said today.

Thirty-three people were killed when an avalanche buried several houses in the region’s remote northeastern Mayyatan Wali Seri village early today, senior police officer Tahir Mahmood Qureshi said.

“Nine houses were completely destroyed, burying 20 females and 13 males alive,” Qureshi said. He said authorities had recovered the bodies of two women and 10 children and were trying to find the others.

The bodies of two women and four children had also been retrieved from Khawaja Seri village in Neelam Valley, hit by an avalanche on Wednesday. A man and a woman died and another man was seriously injured in the remote village of Janawai in Neelam valley when their house caved in after it was hit by an avalanche overnight Friday, Qureshi said.

And five members of a family died when their house was struck by an avalanche in southeastern Leepa valley, he said. “The dead included a couple and their two daughters,” he said, adding that another son of the couple was recovered from the snow alive.

Nearly two metres of snow has fallen in Leepa valley, which was inaccessible by road. Two Pakistani army soldiers were killed in an avalanche in Neelam Valley on Thursday, they said.

Eight other people were killed late yesterday in northern Astore valley, outside Kashmir, when their village was hit by a mass of snow and falling rocks, police said. The avalanche destroyed all 22 houses in the village. Pakistan has been in the grip of a cold snap since February 3 with the mountainous north, including Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, receiving heavy snowfall almost daily. Severe weather has claimed more than 180 lives across the country in the past week, including 80 when a dam burst in southwestern Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the death toll due to avalanches in Afghanistan rose to above 82, with 15 more deaths reported. Afghan officials said six people died when they became trapped in their vehicle after an avalanche struck the highway between the capital, Kabul, and the main northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Further fatalities occurred in southeastern Paktia region. Four people, including two infants, died from cold while five were killed when their vehicle slipped off a road late Friday, police said, adding more than 67 Afghans died from freezing conditions as the country faces its coldest winter after years of droughts.

In India, most of 3,000 motorists stranded on a snowbound highway in Kashmir for the past six days were on the move again late today after the army cleared the snow and ice, an official said. Kashmir government’s official spokesman Farooq Renzu said more than 200 vehicles were requitioned to evacuate the stranded motorists, travelling between Srinagar, the summer capital in the north, and the southern winter capital Jammu.