Siachen rescue operation update

Snowfall hampered efforts to boost search for 135 people buried in avalanche in the Gayari sector. On Saturday, April 7, 2012an avalanche smashed into a Pakistani army base on the Himalayan glacier close to India, burying around 135 soldiers & civilian.  At least 240 Pakistani troops and civilians worked at the site of the disaster at the entrance to the Siachen Glacier with the aid of sniffer dogs and heavy machinery, said the army. But they struggled to dig through some 25 meters (80 feet) of snow spread over an area of about one kilometer. The US team of high altitude specialists arrived in the country to help but could not reach the site of the avalanche due to the bad weather. It has been over two days since a huge wall of snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier base, high in the mountains of Kashmir. Experts say there is little hope of finding survivors, though no bodies have been recovered yet. Specially trained search-and-rescue teams of army engineers equipped with locating gadgets and heavy machinery, on Sunday, joined rescue units aided by sniffer dogs and helicopters. But a senior military official said attempts to send extra equipment up to help with the search on Monday had been delayed. Thousands of soldiers from India and Pakistan stationed in Siachen brave viciously cold temperatures, altitude sickness, high winds and isolation for months at a time. Troops have been posted at elevations of up to 6,700 meters (22,000 feet) and have skirmished intermittently since 1984, though the area has been quiet since a cease-fire in 2003. India and Pakistan have spent heavily to keep a military presence in the frozen area, where temperatures can plunge to minus 70 degrees Celsius.