ISLAMABAD - Heavy snowfall on Monday hampered efforts to boost the search for 135 people majority of them soldiers buried in an avalanche at Gayari Sector of Siachen, as a US team of high altitude specialists arrived to help.
Sources said the military top leadership reviewed the situation on Monday and Chief of Army Staff who returned to GHQ late Sunday night from the site briefed the commanders about the challenge. Sources further said that heavy equipment lined up for the operation could not be transported because of the bad weather conditions.
“We had arranged a C-130 cargo plane to lift some machinery up to the area, but bad weather did not allow the flight,” sources said. Sources said that temperature at the site was minus 15 degree centigrade making it difficult for those involved in search and rescue operation.
An eight-member team of high altitude search and rescue specialists from the US, which arrived here late on Sunday to help with the search effort, could not visit the site. “They remained busy in meeting with military officials here today but could not leave for the site because of bad weather,” US Embassy spokesman Mark Stroh told TheNation. In a related development, rescue teams of Switzerland and Germany were due in Islamabad on Monday night to take part in efforts to recover the missing soldiers. 
A statement issued by the ISPR said: “An expert team comprising three individuals from Switzerland is arriving tonight to assist in rescue operations. Another disaster management team comprising six individuals along with necessary equipment from Germany will also arrive tonight”.
The camp was engulfed between 5:00 am and 6:00 am on Saturday by a mass of snow, stones, mud and slush more than 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) wide and 25 metres high, military said.
Agencies add: It has been over two days since a huge wall of snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier base high in the mountains of Kashmir, and experts say there is little hope of finding survivors, though no bodies have been recovered yet.
Specially trained search-and-rescue teams of army engineers equipped with locating gadgets and heavy machinery on Sunday joined rescue units aided by sniffer dogs and helicopters.
A Pakistani security official involved in the work told AFP the US team was expected to reach the site later on Monday, adding that operations were likely to go on for some time.
“It was a massive snow slide and looks like the rescue work will take days,” the official said.