At least 12 people were killed when an ice shelf collapsed onto them in Azad Kashmir, officials said on Tuesday. The incident occurred in Ashkot village in the mountainous Neelam valley, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Muzaffarabad. "A group of 24 people were moving together in Ashkot village when an ice shelf collapsed on them on Tuesday," senior police official Javed Noor told AFP.
He said that police and army officials in the area immediately launched a rescue operation and recovered 12 dead bodies from the glacier. A local administration official, Attaullah, confirmed the incident and the death toll, saying that "rescue teams are trying hard to recover the remaining people who continue to be trapped under the glacier."