AJK snowslide claims another life, toll tops 76.

Byline: Tariq Naqash

MUZAFFARABAD -- Another young survivor of snowslide in the Neelum Valley succumbed to injuries on Saturday, pushing the death toll to 76 in the calamity-hit area towards the northeast of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) capital, officials said.

Dr Noman Manzoor, deputy medical superintendent of Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahayan Hospital - that is referred to as Combined Military Hospital Muzaffarabad - told reporters that 12-year-old Samina Bibi breathed her last in the Intensive Care Unit on Saturday.

Samina was recovered alive after almost 18 hours from under the debris after a four-storey wooden house in Bakwali village of Surgan area was struck by an avalanche.

More than two dozen people had moved to that house on Monday amid unrelenting snowfall, considering it invulnerable to avalanches, and of them at least 18 were killed.

Samina's grandmother, two siblings, an aunt and a cousin were among the dead. However, she, her father Matiullah, mother Shahnaz Bibi, and a young brother were recovered alive with multiple injuries. Samina and her mother were shifted to Muzaffarabad owing to their critical condition while her father and brother were hospitalised in the valley.

On Friday, Shahnaz Bibi was shifted to Islamabad after her condition deteriorated. Samina, who had sustained a fracture in the bone of her right thigh, was operated here but developed some other problems in the wake of the operation that took her life, Dr Manzoor said.

Her body was dispatched to Bakwali village by an army helicopter by the afternoon, he added.

Dr Manzoor said that overall his hospital had received 23 injured survivors from the valley. Of them, two succumbed to their injuries, four were referred to Islamabad and 17 still were still being treated here, he said.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, the AJK government declared the Neelum and Leepa Valleys and Bhedi tehsil of district Haveli as calamity-hit areas in...