Time to assess damage at bases

Along with civilian population, security forces deployed in Kashmir from various parts of the country were also hit badly by the ravaging floods.

They lost their belongings and their weapons were damaged or left useless after water entered their camps across the Kashmir Valley.

Hundreds of AK rifles, INSAS rifles and SLR rifles, along with ammunition, are still submerged at various places across the Kashmir Valley, so are bombs and hand grenades.

Some reports said 26 AK rifles from an Army camp have been washed away in the floods. In the area of Gogji Bagh in uptown Srinagar, one of the worst hit parts of the Valley, about 400 personnel of a central paramilitary force had to leave their camp after gushing waters engulfed it last Sunday.

With water level receding, they are now making rounds of their complex to locate the weapons.

Similar was the fate of Army camps in other places in the Valley.

However, as they come to terms with what happened, their colleagues work almost round-the-clock to save marooned civilians and deliver relief material to those who refuse to come out of their submerged houses for fear of theft and looting.