Death toll above 20,000 in Pakistan and India, please pray
Articles / In The News
Date: Oct 09, 2005 - 02:35 PM
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Death toll above 20,000 in Pakistan and India, please pray.
Rescuers searched frantically in the rubble of flattened towns and villages on Sunday for survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people in northern Pakistan and India.
In worst-hit Pakistan, more than 24 hours after Saturday morning's quake, hundreds of children were trapped in collapsed schools and 150 people, including foreigners, were buried in two flattened apartment blocks in the capital, Islamabad.
Rescue teams and ordinary citizens laboured with cranes and excavators or used their bare hands in desperate searches for survivors, some complaining bitterly about a lack of assistance from badly stretched central authorities.
President Pervez Musharraf said there were difficulties reaching remote areas. He said Pakistan needed blankets and tents, transport helicopters and medicines, while Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said it also needed financial help.
"This was a major earthquake, a major catastrophe, which has caused huge devastation," Aziz said after flying over the area.
Pledges came from around the world within hours of the disaster and the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the effort was "rushing against the clock".
The 7.6 magnitude quake, the strongest in Pakistan's memory, was centred in forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, and violently jolted large parts of the north, as well as parts of neighbouring Afghanistan and India.
About 19,400 people were killed and more than 42,000 hurt in Pakistan, said Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao. Pakistan's side of the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir and its main city of Muzaffarabad were worst hit.
The communications minister for Pakistani Kashmir, Tariq Farooq, said the toll there alone could reach 30,000.
In Muzaffarabad, most houses, government buildings and shops had collapsed and frightened residents spent a miserable night in driving rain camped in fields, parks, graveyards and cars.
Another 689 people died in Indian Kashmir, where many mud and stone houses were buried under landslides.
Scores of activists from an Islamist charity linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistani militant organisation fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, were among those killed.
The group, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament that took nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to the brink of war, said some of its mosques, schools and a hospital were flattened.
Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said the devastation was the worst in Pakistan's history. "There are many villages that have been wiped off the face of this earth," he said.
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Death toll above 20,000 in Pakistan and India, please pray.
Rescuers searched frantically in the rubble of flattened towns and villages on Sunday for survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people in northern Pakistan and India.
In worst-hit Pakistan, more than 24 hours after Saturday morning's quake, hundreds of children were trapped in collapsed schools and 150 people, including foreigners, were buried in two flattened apartment blocks in the capital, Islamabad.
Rescue teams and ordinary citizens laboured with cranes and excavators or used their bare hands in desperate searches for survivors, some complaining bitterly about a lack of assistance from badly stretched central authorities.
President Pervez Musharraf said there were difficulties reaching remote areas. He said Pakistan needed blankets and tents, transport helicopters and medicines, while Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said it also needed financial help.
"This was a major earthquake, a major catastrophe, which has caused huge devastation," Aziz said after flying over the area.
Pledges came from around the world within hours of the disaster and the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the effort was "rushing against the clock".
The 7.6 magnitude quake, the strongest in Pakistan's memory, was centred in forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, and violently jolted large parts of the north, as well as parts of neighbouring Afghanistan and India.
About 19,400 people were killed and more than 42,000 hurt in Pakistan, said Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao. Pakistan's side of the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir and its main city of Muzaffarabad were worst hit.
The communications minister for Pakistani Kashmir, Tariq Farooq, said the toll there alone could reach 30,000.
In Muzaffarabad, most houses, government buildings and shops had collapsed and frightened residents spent a miserable night in driving rain camped in fields, parks, graveyards and cars.
Another 689 people died in Indian Kashmir, where many mud and stone houses were buried under landslides.
Scores of activists from an Islamist charity linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistani militant organisation fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, were among those killed.
The group, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament that took nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to the brink of war, said some of its mosques, schools and a hospital were flattened.
Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said the devastation was the worst in Pakistan's history. "There are many villages that have been wiped off the face of this earth," he said.
BURIED CHILDREN
Amongst countless tragic sights, perhaps most pitiful was that of hundreds of parents using picks, shovels and their bare hands in a desperate attempt to reach 850 children trapped in the rubble of two schools in Northwest Frontier Province.
The frightened voices of trapped children and the anguished wails of parents accompanied the frantic work in the Balakot valley in the mountains of the province bordering Afghanistan.
"Save me, call my mother, call my father," came the faint voice of a boy, again and again, from the rubble of a government school in which residents said about 200 children were trapped.
"Bring out my child, bring out my child," his mother wailed, beating her chest as other parents and relatives pulled out the bodies of four children, bringing Sunday morning's toll to eight.
Pope Benedict urged a quick and generous global response.
The United States, which has a major military operation in Afghanistan, said it would provide eight military helicopters to get emergency relief to affected communities and two C-130 transport planes with blankets, tents and other supplies.
The World Bank offered $20 million (11.3 million pounds), The European Union earmarked an initial 3.6 million euros (2.4 million pounds) while China said it was donating $6.2 million in cash and materials.
Turkey, which has suffered major earthquakes, said it had sent two military planes carrying aid, doctors and rescue workers and in a further sign of easing tensions, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Musharraf to offer assistance.
Rescue efforts have been hampered by frequent aftershocks causing panic among survivors, many of whom face a bleak immediate future with little or no food or shelter.
"I've been involved in helping refugees for the last 17 years, but I am in shock because I have never seen such devastation," said German aid agency doctor Chris Schmoter in Balakot, where almost every second woman or child bore an injury.
A Reuters reporter counted 105 bodies during an eight-km (five-mile) trek into the town. Some were laid by the road by relatives hoping for help with their burial. Others were carried on charpoys, traditional rope beds.
A boy carried a younger sister of perhaps four or five, her skin stripped off her face and the side of her body by a rock that flattened their house. He did not know what to do.
"There are no bandages or anything at all," he said. "There are no doctors, no nothing -- where should we go?"
Distraught relatives and friends of those missing in the Margala Towers apartments in Islamabad, home to expatriates and middle-class Pakistanis, waited as rescuers scoured the debris.
Musharraf said 35 bodies had been recovered from the apartments and about 80 people had been rescued, but about 150 people were still in the ruins.
The dead included two Japanese and an Egyptian, but rescuers located a buried woman on Sunday, raising hopes for others.
"It's terrible. I'm waiting for a miracle. My brother and his whole family are in there," said Brigadier Abdul Jahsor.
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