Beijing, August 16 – Chinese police today saved 128 people trapped in vehicles by severe blizzard in northern Tibet for over a day, including many who suffered frostbite.
All the people trapped, in 45 vans and cars, were safely returned under the escort of over 70 armed policemen, officials with the local armed police unit said.
Heavy snow fall in the northern Ngari Prefecture, bordering Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, late on Monday night, trapped the 45 vehicles on the Tibet-Xinjiang road.
By early Tuesday, the temperature had fallen to minus 18 degrees Celsius in the region, which is 6,700 meters above sea level. Many people were frostbitten and one traveller from Beijing had slipped into coma, the police said.
The unconscious traveller was rushed to the nearest hospital by the police and is no longer in a critical condition, Xinhua news agency reported from Lhasa, the regional capital.
Local police warned that it was dangerous to travel at night as excessive rainfall this summer has caused many landslides and mudflows.
Police have rescued nearly 2,000 people in the last two months in northern Tibet.
