India avalanche rescue operation ends as eighth and final body found
Rescuers recovered the eighth and final body from the site of an avalanche in a remote area of northern India, the army has said, marking the end of a marathon operation in subzero temperatures.
More than 50 workers were submerged under snow and debris after the avalanche hit a construction camp on Friday near Mana village on the border with Tibet in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.
Authorities had revised down the number of workers on site at the time of the avalanche from 55 to 54 after one worker, previously believed to be buried, was found to have safely made his way home before the avalanche hit.
By Saturday, rescuers had managed to pull out 50 people, but four later succumbed to their injuries, according to an Indian army statement.
By Sunday, rescue teams had recovered the remaining bodies, the army said, adding that they had used a drone-based detection system and a rescue dog to assist in its search operations.
Many of those trapped were migrant labourers working on a highway expansion project covering a 50km (31-mile) stretch from Mana, the last Indian village before the China border, to Mana Pass.
They were living on site in steel containers considered stronger than tents and capable of withstanding harsh weather.
As the ground beneath them shook, the container that construction worker Anil and his colleagues were in began to slide down.
'At first we did not understand what was happening, but when we looked out of the window of the containers, we saw piles of snow all around,' Anil, 20, told the AFP news agency.
He said that the roofs of the containers began bending inwards.
'The way we were engulfed in snow, we had no hope of surviving,' he said, adding that being alive felt 'like a dream'.
His colleague Vipan Kumar thought 'this was the end' when he found himself unable to move as he struggled for air under the thick layer of snow.
'I heard a loud roar, like thunder … before I could react, everything went dark,' he told the Times of India newspaper.
The ecologically fragile Himalayan region, increasingly affected by global warming, is prone to avalanches and flash floods.
In 2021, nearly 100 people died in Uttarakhand when a huge chunk of a glacier fell into a river, triggering flash floods.
Devastating monsoon floods and landslides in 2013 killed 6,000 people and led to calls for a review of development projects in the state.
In 2022, an avalanche also killed 27 trainee mountaineers in Uttarakhand, while a glacier that burst in 2021 triggered a flash flood and left more than 200 people dead.
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