Women, children among 10 die as roof collapses in AJK

MUZAFFARABAD/MANSE­HRA: As many as 10 people, including women and children, died while four other injured when the rooftop of a house caved in due to heavy rain in Tai Mandhool village of district Poonch, some 120 kilometres from here early Monday morning, local administration said.

Assistant Commissioner Hajeera told media the residents of the house were asleep early morning when roof collapsed on them. Local people and administration dug out four people alive later in the morning and shifted to hospital. He said 10 bodies were recovered and identified as Noreen Begum 35, Said Begum 60, Seher Waheed 13, Tabia Waheed 11, Waqar Begum 35, Zamad Zohaib 8, Asnad Zohaib 12, Areesha Zohaib 11, Zoya Zohaib 4 and Madasar Arshad 5.

AJK’s disaster management department secretary, Shahid Ayub, said 22 people had died while 14 injured in July in rain-related incidents. Sixty-eight houses collapsed and 27 were partially damaged.

Meanwhile, the central bridge which links Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and the residential camps of Chinese nationals working on the 4300-megawatt Dasu Hydropower Project were swept away by flash floods in Upper Kohistan in the early Monday.

“The traffic between the KP and GB has been suspended as the central bridge at the Karakoram Highway has been washed away by the Ichar Nullah,” Upper Kohistan Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Asif told reporters. The floodwater in the Ichar Nullah along with the Indus River wreaked havoc in the area.

The central bridge at the KKH, residential camps of Chinese workers, heavy machinery, trucks and dumpers of the company working on the Dasu Hydropower Project were swept away. “Thank God, the workers and engineers were present at the residential camps which had been established separately at the upstream and downstream of Ichar Nullah Bridge and thus remained safe. But machinery, trucks and dumpers were swept away in the floods,” an official of the Dasu Dam project told reporters.

He said that the Frontier Works Organisation had moved its machinery 8km downstream from the Dasu, the district headquarters of Upper Kohistan, to erect a suspension bridge to resume the traffic which, according to him, would take some time to complete.

The local population settled along the Ichar Nullah was affected and dozens of houses were inundated but no loss of life was reported from anywhere in the district. The passengers travelling within the Upper Kohistan and both federating units – KP and GB -- remained stranded for hours after the bridge at the KKH was washed away.