By IANS,
Jammu : With scores of men using shovels and hundreds of hands offering prayers, all that the rescue teams could bring out of the debris of a landslide in Jammu and Kashmir was seven bodies. There was little chance of survival for any of at least 30 labourers trapped.
Search lights were put on Thursday evening, but the rescue teams were not expecting any survivors among the labourers still buried.
The landslide swept away two trucks in the morning in which the workers were travelling on the mountainous Kishtwar-Chhatro road, about 220 km north of Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
“So far seven bodies have been recovered,” an official spokesman told IANS late in the evening.
The rescue operations were on, as the families of the labourers buried under the mounds of earth were pressing for the operations to continue until they get to know about the fate of their bread winners.
“All our efforts are on. Let’s hope we find some survivors,” Shahid Inyatullah, deputy commissioner of Kishtwar, told reporters at the accident site.
But reports indicated there were remote chances of the rescue teams’ efforts yielding any positive results. They were not able to find even a single survivor till late Thursday.
Meanwhile, leaders including Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad expressed grief over the loss of lives in the mishap.