At least 22 people, including 10 children, froze to death in their vehicles after heavy snowfall at the popular hill station Murree in Punjab province.
The heavy snowfall overnight deteriorated the traffic jam situation leading to blockages of all the routes in Murree.
Government has declared Murree as a calamity-hit area after heavy snowfall wreaked havoc in the city.
Video shared on social media showed cars packed bumper-to-bumper, with one-metre-high piles of snow on their roofs. “The heavy snowfall caused a traffic jam and the closure of roads,” Babar Khan, a tourist who was stranded for hours, told the media.
“Roads were also closed due to falling trees in many places.” The website of Pakistan’s National Weather Forecasting Centre said heavy snowfall was expected in the area until Sunday afternoon, while Information Minister Fawad Chaudry said “decades” of weather records had been broken in the last 48 hours. For days, Pakistan’s social media has been full of pictures and videos of people playing in the snow around Murree, a picturesque resort town built by the British in the 19th century as a sanatorium for its colonial troops.
