Srinagar, March 12
At least 11 persons, including two soldiers and two children, were killed while over 80 others were evacuated as unprecedented snowfall in March triggered avalanches and damaged houses in several parts of the Kashmir region.

The snowfall - one of the heaviest in recent years - continued incessantly for nearly 60 hours since Sunday evening before stopping on Wednesday morning, snapping road and air links.

“It was one of the heaviest spells of uninterrupted snow. We recorded 159.4 mm of snowfall in three days. This much snow has not been recorded since March 1998,” Meteorological Department, Director in-charge, Farooq Ahmad Khan said. The 294-km Srinagar-Jammu highway, the only road link between Kashmir and rest of the country, was closed to traffic for the third consecutive day.

Workers remove fallen trees from a road after heavy snowfall in Srinagar on Wednesday. PTI

Though Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted eight persons were killed in the region, including two soldiers, Kashmir Divisional Commissioner Shailender Kumar put the casualties at 10. The state police said seven persons had been killed. The 11 deaths were reported from Kargil, Shopian, Kulgam and Budgam districts. Two soldiers and three Nepali labourers working for the Army were killed in an avalanche in Kargil district of the remote Ladakh region, the Chief Minister said. However, officials in the civil administration and police said two soldiers and three labourers died in two separate avalanches in Kargil's Drass and Kaksar sectors. A police spokesman said an avalanche hit Batra Camp of 82 Field Regiment at Drass resulting in the death of soldiers Vijay Prasad and Darminder Singh. Their bodies have been recovered.

Three civilians, including two boys aged 12 and 14, died when an avalanche swept a part of south Kashmir’s Kulgam district. Eight others were also injured. A 48-year-old woman died in a separate incident in Kulgam district, the police said.

Another woman was killed when a shed collapsed in South Kashmir’s Shopian district. In Central Kashmir’s Budgam district, a woman died following when a shed collapsed due to heavy snow, the Deputy Commissioner said. Nearly 600 houses and 300 other structures were damaged in the district. Police said it had rescued 80 civilians in Kulgam and Shopian district and moved them to safer places.

The heavy snow also disrupted communication services and caused widespread electricity outages. “This kind of snow with heavy water content has caused extensive damage to power infrastructure including high tension network and low tension lines,” the Chief Minister said, as outages in some areas continued for nearly two days.

Mobile phone services, including Internet, were also suspended. An official of the state Meteorological Department that had warned of heavy snowfall said the Western Disturbance that caused the inclement weather had weakened.

Avalanche kills 4 Pak soldiers

Islamabad: Four Pakistani army soldiers were killed in an avalanche in the mountainous northern Gilgit-Baltistan region on Tuesday night. The military's media wing said 26 soldiers were hit by the avalanche and only 22 could be evacuated. In 2012, an avalanche on the Pakistan-occupied side of the Siachen glacier had killed 140 people, including 129 soldiers. — PTI