Children the worst hit in Valley with maximum deaths in Thannamandi and Pancheri areas
In the Valley, where the floods seem to have left a quaint bit of space for the victims to hold on to, it has not even spared the children who seem to be struggling to sustain themselves through corpses and haplessness. Deprived of their cozy beds, regular dose of milk, favourite biscuits and a small corner to play with their soft toys, hundreds of children have been left suffering in isolation and majority of them are falling ill after being unable to cope up with the flood fury, worst in last 60 years.
Ever since these children have been uprooted from their homes, most of them are spending sleepless nights and the warmth of their mothers’ lap just doesn’t seem to be enough to calm them down. Those who have just started to understand what a natural calamity is are struggling to find reasons behind the catastrophe.
As the scale of tragedy is still enfolding and rescue workers are struggling to evacuate stranded people, large number of children has been buried alive after their mud houses were hit by landslides in the Jammu region. The maximum children deaths were reported in Thannamandi and Pancheri area where mud houses were converted into debris.
Those living in Kashmir Valley have been facing the daunting task of surviving despite all odds as they are surrounded by water. After water levels started rising late on Saturday night, most of the children were shifted to upper floors of their houses and since then they have been surviving in the hope of receiving some help from the rescue teams of the Indian Army and the NDRF.
It has been four long days and none of them have been eating properly and they don’t even have access to safe drinking water. Most of the children arriving at relief camps are suffering from symptoms of cold, cough and chest infection due to exposure during the night.
The infants seem to be the worst sufferers. Hapless parents are cursing their fate for not able to come to the rescue of their children in difficult times. “We could not come out of our houses due to massive flooding and had no option but to shift to the roof tops to save our lives,” a flood survivor said, narrating his three-day long ordeal in a relief camp.
“We could not eat properly for last three days as first floor of hour house was completely submerged and our ration was destroyed. Today we were rescued by the Army men from our house in Rajbagh area,” a relieved parent said while nourishing his two-month-old child in an Army relief camp in Srinagar.
In order to reach out to the suffering children, the Army medical authorities on Tuesday flew in two tons of medical stores capable of treating more than 7,000 patients from Kanpur. Additional pediatricians were also rushed. According to MOD spokesman, more than 100 infants and children have been treated at the Army Base Hospital in the last 24 hours after they were rescued from their marooned houses in different parts of Srinagar.