Calgary Herald

Pakistan slide buries entire garrison

- TOM HUSSAIN

An avalanche Saturday buried alive a garrison of at least 100 Pakistani troops stationed on a glacier high in the Himalayas that has been fought over with India for 30 years.

The avalanche smothered the garrison headquarte­rs, located 16,000 feet high in the Gayari sector of the Siachen Glacier, shortly before 6 a.m., a military spokesman said.

The remote area was accessible only by high-altitude helicopter­s, and it was hours before the first military rescue teams were flown in.

The spokesman, Gen. Athar Abbas, said sniffer dogs, trained to find earthquake victims buried under rubble, were being used to locate the missing soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry regiment. They could number as high as 150, according to some Pakistani television reports.

There were no confirmed reports of casualties, or of survivors being found, by dusk, when helicopter flights and rescue efforts on site were suspended until daybreak.

The Siachen Glacier is in the Kashmir region, claimed by Pakistan, India and China, and lies at the disputed border of the three countries. Pakistan and India fought a 1965 war over possession of Kashmir.

Although inhabitabl­e, and therefore not delineated by Pakistan and India, it became notorious as the world’s highest battlefiel­d in 1984, after Indian troops occupied its strategic heights at 22,000 feet. There were fierce fighting and artillery exchanges until 1987.

Between them, India and Pakistan station up to 20,000 troops on the Siachen Glacier, but most casualties there are caused by hypothermi­a.

The conflict, which is set against a unique backdrop of 24,000-feet-plus peaks, including K-2, the world’s secondhigh­est mountain, was captured in the 2000 Hollywood movie, Vertical Limit.

Pakistan sought to seize the strategic initiative in the area in 1999, when troops from the Northern Light Infantry — whose garrison was buried by Saturday’s avalanche — occupied vacant Indian bunkers at Kargil, cutting off the sole road supplying Indian troops on Siachen.

Militants of the Lashkari-taiba, known as LET, were also involved in the fighting, which brought India and Pakistan, which both have nuclear weapons, to the verge of allout war.

A private visit to India by Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, was to start Sunday, former diplomats in both countries said. He is to make a pilgrimage to a Sufi shrine in Ajmer, but Zardari will also meet Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, for lunch during the visit.

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