A shepherd has discovered the body of a man who vanished nearly three decades ago, preserved in a glacier exposed by melting ice in a remote Pakistani mountain region.
The body was found on 1 August with clothing intact in the Supat Valley, also known as Lady Valley, in the Kohistan region in the country’s northeast, according to The Express Tribune.
“What I saw was unbelievable,” the local shepherd who found the body, Omar Khan, told the BBC. “The body was intact. The clothes were not even torn.”
An identity card recovered with the body named the man as Naseeruddin.
Once police confirmed the identity, locals came forward to provide more information, said Mr Khan, who often visits the area in summer.
Police say Naseeruddin disappeared in June 1997 during a snowstorm after falling into a glacier crack.
Naseeruddin, who had a wife and two children, had been travelling on horseback with his brother Kathiruddin at the time.
A family dispute forced the two brothers to leave their home on the day he disappeared, according to The Express Tribune. As a result, the family had to migrate from Palas Valley to Alai tehsil in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region.
Having arrived in the valley in the morning, Naseeruddin stepped into a cave in the afternoon, his brother told the BBC. Kathiruddin looked for him inside the cave when he did not return. He went to get help from other people in the area but they never found him.
Experts have said the discovery indicates the role of climate change in accelerating glacial melt.
Glacier conditions freeze bodies fast and prevent decomposition, according to Professor Muhammad Bilal, an environmental scientist at Comsats University.
Low oxygen and moisture then cause the body to mummify in the glacier.
Researchers previously found that climate change is altering the landscape across the northern regions of Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan – part of an area referred to as The Third Pole for its high levels of ice.
A 2023 International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development report found that Himalayan glaciers could lose up to two-thirds of their volume by the end of the century if current levels of emissions persist.
