Attabad Lake - stock photo

The lake was formed due to a massive landslide at Attabad village in Gilgit-Baltistan, 9 miles upstream of Karimabad that occurred on 4 January 2010. The landslide killed twenty people and blocked the flow of the Hunza River for five months. The lake flooding has displaced 6,000 people from upstream villages, stranded a further 25,000, and inundated over 12 miles of the Karakoram Highway. The lake reached 13 miles long and over 100 metres in depth by the first week of June 2010 when it began flowing over the landslide dam, completely submerging lower Shishkat and partly flooding Gulmit.