An Indian soldier was in extremely critical condition after being rescued almost a week after he was buried under 35 feet of snow by an avalanche that killed nine other soldiers.
Hanamanthappa Koppad spent six days trapped 19,600 feet high in the Himalayas — an area known as the “world’s highest battlefield” between Indian and Pakistan, AFP reported.
Koppad was pulled out of the snow late Monday after Indian authorities said there was little hope of finding survivors on the Siachen glacier in the disputed region of Kashmir.
“We hope the miracle continues,” Gen. D. S. Hooda, head of India’s northern command, told The AP. “Surprisingly, his oxygen levels seemed OK, and his heartbeat was there.”
Rescuers used dogs and special radar to find the missing troops in temperatures of almost minus 49 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The effort went on day and night, except during two nights when blizzards hit the area,” Hooda told AFP. “In the end, the whole effort paid off as a miracle when a survivor was pulled out.”
Koppa, who was found conscious but with extreme hypothermia, was flown Tuesday to a military hospital in Delhi, where he remained comatose and placed on a ventilator.
“We are all very, very happy,” Koppad’s father, who didn’t give his name, told reporters. “God has been very kind to us. His mother had been crying, I was also crying. We don’t have money to go and visit him. If the government can help us a little, we can go to meet him.”
Hooda said helicopters flew battery-powered snow-cutting machines to the disaster site.
About 8,000 soldiers have died on the glacier since 1984 — almost all from avalanches, frostbite, altitude sickness or heart failure. In 2012, 140 Pakistani soldiers were killed at the Gayari base on the glacier.
Each side is estimated to deploy about 3,000 troops on the glacier, where the nuclear-armed neighbors battled in 1987 over Siachen in the Kashmir region.
No fighting has been reported since the rivals agreed to a ceasefire in 2003 – but India is spending about $1 million a day to keep its military base supplied, according to The Times of India.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Koppad in the Delhi hospital.
“We are all hoping and praying for the best,” Modi tweeted.