Avalanche in AJK pushes death toll to 77.

Byline: Tariq Naqash

MUZAFFARABAD -- A six-year-old survivor of an avalanche succumbed to her wounds in a hospital on Thursday, pushing the death toll in the Neelum Valley to 75 and 77 for Azad Jammu and Kashmir, officials said.

Safia, daughter of Tariq Shaikh, succumbed to her brain injuries in Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed al NahaAyan Hospital, also referred to as Combined Military Hospital, after midnight, said Prof Dr Adnan Mehraj.

Quoting her mother, Dr Mehraj said the young victim had spent more than 20 hours under the snow after their house in Seri village was engulfed by an avalanche.

She and two other survivors from the neighbouring Bakwali village were first airlifted to Sharda and from there to Muzaffarabad on Tuesday afternoon.

Dr Mehraj said Prime Minister Imran Khan had particularly expressed concern about Safia's condition during his visit to the hospital on Wednesday.

Safia's father Tariq Shaikh, doing some odd job in Karachi, had arrived in Muzaffarabad on Tuesday night and after visiting his daughter in CMH had left straight for his village by road, as his other two children were among the dead.

Shaikh Khairullah, an elderly member of the bereaved family, told Dawn that as many as 18 people from one family were killed after their two houses in Seri village were struck by a huge mass of snow on Monday afternoon - Safia was the 19th victim.

The dead included five women, one man and 12 young boys and girls, he said.

Mr Khairullah recalled that only six out of 18 bodies could be recovered by the same [Monday] evening. 'We recovered another 10 bodies on Tuesday,' he said.

A SOLDIER escorts members of a stranded family to a helicopter in Neelum Valley. Search teams continued to pull out bodies on Thursday from homes destroyed by...