The body of a man missing for nearly three decades has been found in a melting glacier in Pakistan.
Last Friday, a shepherd stumbled upon the body, with its clothing intact, in the so-called Lady Valley in the country's mountainous Kohistan region.
The body was identified as Naseeruddin alias Hajo through an identity card found in his pocket, The Express Tribune reported.
"What I saw was unbelievable," Omar Khan, the shepherd who found the body, told BBC Urdu. "The body was intact. The clothes were not even torn."
Police were able to trace it to Naseeruddin, who disappeared in June 1997 after falling into a glacier crack during a snowstorm while returning from the Sapit Valley.
Naseeruddin, who had a wife and two children, was travelling with his brother Kathiruddin on horseback on the day he disappeared.
It is understood a family feud had forced the two men to leave their home at the time.
Kathiruddin recalled that they had arrived in the valley that morning, before his brother stepped into a cave that afternoon and vanished.
Despite exhaustive searches in the glacier, no body was found, and a funeral prayer was held at the spot.
Professor Muhammad Bilal, head of the Department of Environment at Comsats University Islamabad, said when a body falls into a glacier, the extreme cold freezes it fast, preventing decomposition.
Then the body is mummified due to a lack of oxygen and moisture in the glacier. But some experts believe the body's discovery shows how climate change has accelerated glacial melt.
Himalayan glaciers could lose up to two-thirds of their volume by the end of this century, according to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
