Heavy snowfall: Team sent to rescue stranded shepherds in far-off area of Balakot

MANSEHRA: A joint team of the Rescue 1122 and Kaghan Development Authority on Thursday left for the Khamba Nar area of Balakot to rescue over a dozen shepherds and other people who had been stranded there due to the heavy snowfall.

“I cannot say anything concrete about the fate of my family members as the survival of a human being in such inclement weather inside the small muddy huts is very difficult,” Mohammad Riaz, the relative of stranded shepherds, told reporters in Balakot.

He informed the Rescue 1122 that his family’s six members, who had gone to the Khamba Nar, a mountainous meadow situated at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jammu and Kashmir boundary, for grazing over 500 goats and sheep but stranded there following the heavy snowfall. “I was in an area near Balakot and returned back to inform my family and seek the government help to rescue the stranded people as a mega glacier fell on the way amid heavy snowfall,” Riaz said.

He added that over a dozen people, six of them his family members and other men and women from the nearby areas, had been stranded after the unexpected snowfall.

Riaz and his stranded relatives belonged to the Shawal Ghami Jahangiri area of Balakot who had gone to the summer pasture of their herds.

“We are on the way to the dangerous mountainous area to rescue the stranded shepherds and their herds and can share more information with the media upon our return,” Amir Khadam, a team member of the Rescue 1122, told reporters.

Deputy Commissioner Adnan Khan Bhittani also confirmed that a joint team of professionals had been dispatched to the boundary area to rescue the stranded people.