Six one-month-old puppies, have become the talk of the Soibugh village in this central Kashmir Budgam district as they miraculously escaped a Mig-21 crash over them.
The polka-dotted puppies must have seen the Mig-21 slide, after the crash, over the small crevice in the ground where they were born few weeks ago.
However, the thud of the crashing Mig and the subsequent in the aircraft had left the canines visibly in a shock as they continued to stay in a huddle, even several hours after the accident.
Hundreds of curious villagers including a sizable number of school children thronged village, 32 kms from summer capital Srinagar, after the aircraft crashed while on a routine training sortie around 11 am.
The pilot of the Mig-21 Bison of IAF managed to eject safely and was subsequently helped by the villagers before being rescued by the search parties.
Not just the puppies, even some of the residents of Dhaharmuna locality were lucky that the aircraft crashed into the thick vegetation of Poplar trees, which stopped its slide towards the residential houses.
A number of trees were uprooted and burnt down by the impact of the crash.
"We heard a big bang around 11 AM shortly after the flight hit the ground, also sending plumes of smoke and fire into the air ," Mohammad Jabbar, a local resident, said.
He said they rushed to the scene to help the survivors but later learnt that the pilot had ejected and landed safely.
"It was also a miraculous escape for the students (of the local school) and the inmates of some of the residential houses," another eye-witness Farooq Ahmad Dar said pointing towards the structures.
"Had not been the plane stuck in the trees, it would have hit some of the residential houses as well," he said.
Army personnel along with police, who immediately reached the site of the crash, were busy keep the crowds away and were searching for the black box.
