The remains of a four-year-old boy who vanished during the devastating 2005 earthquake have finally been recovered from rubble in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 21 years after he went missing.
Jamal Shafiq disappeared on October 8, 2005, when a catastrophic 7.6-magnitude earthquake flattened large swathes of Azad Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, killing over 80,000 people.
His father, Shafiq-ur-Rehman, lost eight family members in the disaster, but young Jamal’s fate remained a haunting question mark for more than two decades.
The discovery came during the recent reconstruction of the family home. Workers clearing old debris unearthed human remains, and the clothes and shoes found alongside them allowed the family to identify the remains as those of their long-lost son.
The 2005 earthquake remains one of the deadliest natural disasters in Pakistan’s history, with entire towns, including much of Balakot, reduced to rubble.
For Shafiq-ur-Rehman, the grim discovery brings a measure of closure to a wound that has remained open for 21 years.
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