Srinagar: The Srinagar-Jammu National highway, connecting the Kashmir Valley with the rest of the country, remained closed for the third day on Wednesday. Meanwhile, as many as 12 flights also saw cancellation as the aircrafts could not land at Srinagar airport owing to poor visibility.

Inspector General of Police (IGP), Traffic, Jagjit Singh said that the Srinagar-Jammu national highway is likely to be opened tomorrow. However, he informed that the authorities will first clear stranded vehicles, including goods carrier and passenger buses.

The highway remained closed for the third consecutive day on Wednesday, leaving hundreds of vehicles stranded on the road.

“The continuous rain and snow resulted in landslides at different places on the highway, leading to the stoppage of the vehicular traffic,” police officials said.

They said that despite an alert having been sounded by the state administration, hundreds of vehicles, including light motor vehicles were stuck on the national highway.

Sources said that the stretch from Banihal to Ramban is the worst-affected portion as major landslides were reported at Panthal, Chamalwas, Magerkor, Marog and Ramsoo. Some small landslides were also reported on the Udhampur-Chenani road.

Officials said that the snow clearance operation in Bannihal and removal of debris elsewhere has started. However, travelers are advised not to undertake any journey without contacting our control rooms in Jammu and Srinagar.

Meanwhile, with a slight improvement in weather conditions in Srinagar, the air traffic resumed at the Srinagar International Airport after one Air India flight landed at the airport in the afternoon, an airport official said.

“Earlier, twelve flights were cancelled due to low visibility and fresh snowfall on Wednesday,” Sharad Kumar, Director Srinagar Airport told ‘Kashmir Vision’.

“The Air India flight AI 821 landed at 1355hrs,” he added.

Earlier in the morning, seven Indigo flights, one Air India, Spice Jet, and Go-Air flights were cancelled due to low visibility and snowfall.

The sources at the airport said that a total of 10 flights operated today after the clearance of weather in afternoon. He said that 12 flights were cancelled due to bad weather.

Pertinently, on Tuesday, morning flights were also suspended due to heavy snowfall causing low visibility.

Flights resumed after the weather situation improved in the afternoon and continued to run thereafter.

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