GEO 436 GULMIT: Panicked people took everything they could carry, even doors and windows, as a lake threatened to flood dozens of villages in Hunza valley, officials and witnesses said Monday. The lake emerged on January 4 as a result of a massive landslide that killed 20, left about 25,000 people stranded and blocked Hunza river in a remote Himalayan region about 750 kilometres (450 miles) north of Islamabad. Water from the lake has submerged parts of Gulmit, a tourist resort on the main Karakoram Highway linking Pakistan with China, resident Rehan Shah said. The highway has already been closed, badly affecting trade between the two countries. “We have suffered a loss of more than 500 billion rupees (about 59.3 million dollars) since January,” president of the Gilgit chamber of commerce, Javed Hussain, told AFP in Karimabad, the main town in the picturesque Hunza valley. Trade convoys arriving in the border town of Sust are sent to Hussaini town from where they are loaded onto boats to cross the lake, Hussain said. Then private loaders, carrying goods on their back put the cargo on jeeps for onward shipment to Gilgit, he said. Officials say 1,700 people have already fled their homes after floods swept through Ayeenabad and Shishkat villages in the district of Hunza, wiping out dozens of houses.
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