Kosovo Avalanche - Final Body Recovered

Rescue teams have recovered on Tuesday the body of 20-year-old Rasmin Reka, Kosovo Security Forces, KSF, announced.

Reka is the tenth victim, all from the same family, of the avalanche in southern Kosovo that swallowed 18 houses on Saturday night in the village of Restelica in Sharr Mountains.

The only survivor, a five-year-old girl Asmira Reka, was pulled alive from the rubbles of the house on Sunday, buried under ten meters of snow.

Serbia’s President Boris Tadic replied to reported requests for help from the local Gorani community, offering on Tuesday his country’s help in taking care of Asmira Reka.

But the girl’s family rebuffed the offer saying that politics should not be involved in such tragedies.

“This is a political game of Serbia. We are disturbed by claims that we have asked help from the state of Serbia. This is a lie. We have our state, which helped us in every single moment of the tragedy,” the family Reka was quoted by the local media.

More than 500 Kosovo Security Forces, police, fire fighters and local villagers worked for three days to get to the bottom of the houses in search for survivors.

Authorities in the region of Dragash, fear new avalanches could hit the region, as the snowstorm has not stopped yet.

Kosovo has been hit by a wave of heavy snowfall and fierce blizzards in the mountains over the last two weeks, with temperatures dropping as low as low as minus 18 in some villages.