Thursday, February 10 2005 15:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jammu: With the vital Jammu-Srinagar National Highway remaining closed for the fourth consecutive day today (Feb 10, 2005), the Indian Air Force (IAF) has pressed its helicopters to airlift over 3000 passengers stranded on different places enroute the highway to Jammu.

Over 300 passengers have been already airlifted to Jammu from Banihal and others places enroute the highway and most of them were old people, children and tourists, Defence sources said.

IAF helicopters have been pressed into service to airlift the stranded passengers to Jammu and other places, he said.

Besides this almost 7-8 choppers and some planes have been used to ferry troops from Srinagar to Jammu and Jammu to Srinagar and other forward areas in Jammu and Kashmir, they said.

The soldiers are waiting at the Air Force airport to be taken to forward areas and Srinagar, they said.

The planes used in these operation included AN-32, M-17 and MI-25 helicopters, they said adding that we want to help them in this direction.

Due to repeated closures of Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, over 11000 troops have been air lifted to and fro by IAF from Jammu to Srinagar and Srinagar to Jammu during January and February this year (2005), they said.