ISLAMABAD // Army engineers are battling against time and the threat of seismic shakes to save a 500km stretch of northern Pakistan from being devastated by a potential flash flood.
The threat has been building since January 4, when a massive landslide temporarily dammed a river in the mountainous area of Hunza, widely believed to be the inspiration for the fictional kingdom of Shangri-La, creating a lake that continues to rise steadily.
The landslide removed 120 metres of mountainside, destroyed the village of Ata-abad, killing 19 residents, isolated 25,000 residents upriver from the landslide-dam, and severed a two-kilometre stretch of the Karakorum Highway, Pakistan’s only land link with China.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100316/FOREIGN/703159836/1103/NEWS
Ismailimail 