Bad weather holds up airlifting of mortal remains of 9 Siachen martyrs

New Delhi, Feb 12: The mortal remains of nine other soldiers who were martyred after a massive avalanche hit their post on February 3 are still to be brought to the Siachen base camp.

Army sources told OneIndia on Friday morning that the officials were still waiting the weather to get cleared.

"For the last couple of days the weather has really deteriorated in the region. Even last night there was heavy snowfall. Today morning, the weather had cleared up a bit," an official attached to the Army camp in Udhampur told OneIndia over the phone.

According to him, the Army Commander General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Northern Command, Lieutenant General D S Hooda had summoned a meeting on Friday morning to discuss the possible plan.

"Everything depends upon the weather so that the planes can land. The bodies have to be shifted from to base camp first," the official said.

Another Army official told OneIndia that the aviation assets have been kept on a stand-by mode in the last two days.

"We were lucky that we could bring down Lance Naik Hanumanthappa to the base camp by a chopper. We had a patch of opening of weather for half an hour on the day he was pulled out alive. The weather is extremely bad since then," an official said.

The bodies are still kept at one of the forward posts at Siachen.

Among the 10 soldiers died, four are from Tamil Nadu, three from Karnataka (including Lance Naik Hanumanthappa) and one each from Kerala, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

OneIndia News