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Eleven tourists, including two children, were killed in a road accident when the vehicle they were travelling in skidded off the road and fell into a deep gorge on the Zojila pass near a popular north Kashmir health resort in Sonamarg on Sunday evening.
The victims were part of a group of two families hailing from Ahmedabad and were on a vacation in Kashmir.
The two families were traveling in a Tata Sumo taxi on the mountainous Zojila pass, which connects the Kashmir Valley with the cold desert region of Ladakh, when the vehicle went out of control and rolled down.
"The vehicle rolled down several hundred meters into the steep gorge resulting in on-
the-spot death of eleven people. A seven-year-old boy had a miraculous escape and was rescued from the accident spot. He is injured and is being treated at a hospital in Sonamarg," said Imtiyaz Ahmad, district police chief of Ganderbal.
"So far we have recovered bodies of two other children who died in the tragedy," he said.
"The rescue and relief operations are on. The terrain is very difficult to access and mobility in the area is very limited. We are trying our level best to recover other bodies," he added.