Muzaffarabad
A 12-year-old girl on Wednesday was found alive after being engulfed under a snow blanket for 18 hours as the family’s house was hit by an avalanche in Azad Kashmir.
Samina Bibi recalled screaming and shouting for help as she lay trapped in a room under the snow.
Samina was one of the lucky ones. “I thought I would die there,” she told Reuters from a hospital bed in Muzaffarabad, where she and dozens of other injured people were receiving treatment after being airlifted out of the avalanche area.
For Samina’s mother, Shahnaz Bibi, who lost a son and another daughter, the rescue was nothing short of a miracle. After being pulled out of the snow earlier, Shahnaz said she and her brother, Irshad Ahmad, had given up hope of finding Samina alive.
Samina said she could not sleep while she waited to be rescued. Her leg was fractured and blood was oozing from her mouth. For the family, the disaster happened very fast. “We didn’t hear a rumble,” Shahnaz said, recalling the moments before the avalanche buried the three-storey house where she and her family were sheltering with others from the village. At least 18 of them died.—Reuters
