200 feared dead in Jammu alone

The death toll includes 67 victims of Nowshera bus accident and 30 victims of Pancheri landslide. Bodies of several of them are yet to be recovered.

According to reports, 2,500 livestock perished in the flood, while over 170 government buildings suffered heavy damages during the calamity.

Pointing that survey of the affected villages and buildings was in progress, he suspected nearly 1,600 villages across Jammu region were directly or indirectly affected by the flood.

With the Army, police and civil administration having rescued over 23,000 people from areas hit by flood and landslides in Jammu region, the rescue work is almost over, he said. “We are now focusing on relief and restoration of damaged infrastructure.’’

Road link to all district headquarters and tehsils has been restored and the internal road links are likely to functional within a week.

Doctor stranded in Libya seeks info on wife, kids in Srinagar

TABASSUM BARNAGARWALA
MUMBAI, September 11

DR Jawed Sheikh, 39, has been unsuccessfully trying since Saturday to reach his Russian wife Sheikh Suriya, 37, and sons Aamir, 13, and Shairzad, 11, who lived in the Raj Bagh area of Srinagar.

Sheikh himself is stranded for the past six months in Libya’s strife-torn city of Benghazi, where he went to work in al-Jala hospital. “I have been trying to contact my wife since Saturday but their phone is out of network,” he said.

When he last spoke to Suriya on Friday night, hours before flood ravaged Raj Bagh, she was worried over the rising water level. “Where will we go?” she had told Jawed. He had replied: “Leave all your belongings and take both the kids to safety.”

According to Jawed, Suriya was unwilling to leave and had decided to seek refuge with her sons on the second floor of their two-storeyed house. “The floods came at 4am on Saturday. Since then there has been no contact.”

He added that he tried to contact the Home Ministry, Army helpline numbers and NDRF’s control room. “The numbers are continuously busy,” he added.

The doctor shifted to Libya in February. However, tensions in Libya has forced him to hide in his hostel since the past two months. He as not received a penny of his monthly salary of Rs 1.4 lakh.  “I shifted to earn for my family and now I don’t know where they are. The international airport is destroyed in Libya and I have no resources to return,” he said.