Army Chief visits Siachen with words of praise for soldiers
Chief of Army Staff General Dalbir Singh Suhag interacts with soldiers in Siachen on Friday.
Tribune News Service
Jammu, April 1
Chief of the Army Staff General Dalbir Singh Suhag today visited Siachen to review the situation following recent avalanches in which 12 soldiers and a porter were killed.
“The Army Chief visited the sites where soldiers lost their lives at Siachen in the recent avalanches. He interacted with the soldiers serving at Siachen and commended them for their outstanding work in difficult conditions. He exhorted them to be careful of the threats of avalanches,” said defence spokesperson Col SD Goswami.
The Army Chief also met the porters who maintain the posts in difficult conditions at Siachen.
General Dalbir Singh was accompanied by Northern Command chief Lt Gen DS Hooda and 14 Corps Commander Lt Gen SK Patyal.
On March 25, two soldiers on patrol duty were buried under an avalanche in the Turtuk area of western Siachen.
A porter died on February 27 when he fell into a 200-foot-deep crevasse in Siachen’s northern glacier.
His body was found 130-foot-deep after the rescue teams cut through frozen snow and ice.
On February 3, 10 soldiers were buried under a major avalanche which wiped out an Army post on Siachen Glacier. While nine of the soldiers were found dead, Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, buried under 25 feet of snow, was found alive in a critical condition six days after the avalanche had hit the Sonam post.
Lance Naik Hanamanthappa, however, succumbed to hypothermia among other ailments at Research and Referral Hospital in New Delhi on February 11.
Following the death of nine soldiers on February 3, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit had suggested withdrawal of Indian and Pakistani armies from the strategic glacier.