CHITRAL: Search for the students buried under the snow avalanche in Susoom village here bore no fruit on the third day on Tuesday as the efforts were suspended in the midday fearing that the snow mass could drift downward.

The snow avalanche had buried seven students of Parsan village on Saturday last while they were returning to their village after appearing in grade-9 examinations.

Mohammad Yaqub, the member of district council from the area, told this correspondent on phone that the personnel of Chitral Scouts, Levies and police and the local volunteers started digging the snow to search the bodies, but the work was to be stopped after some hours when movement of the snow mass was noted.

He said that later, district nazim Maghfirat Shah and Chitral DC Osama Ahmed Warraich also reached the site along with the team of rescuers sent by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) from Islamabad in a helicopter, but the work could not be resumed.

Amirullah, a volunteer, said that the column of avalanche debris was estimated to be over 20 feet and it was gradually gathering mass because of drifting down. He said that there was almost no chance of survival of the students under the debris and it could take many days to search the bodies.

The NDMA team is equipped with gadgets for remote sensing of the bodies while it is also carrying sniffer dogs, but chances of its staring work are dim due to the depth where the bodies were supposed to be lying.

Meanwhile, district nazim Maghfirat Shah said that the road to the village had been opened for traffic to mobilise machinery to clear the snow avalanche. He said that the district government would provide all-out support to the NDMA team to make the mission of searching the bodies a success.

The rescue workers had earlier retrieved two bodies from underneath the snow.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2016