Posted on 10/09/2005 3:34:01 PM PDT by Lessismore
Islamabad/Srinagar, Oct 9. (PTI) The full magnitude of the devastation caused by Saturday's killer earthquake unfolded on Sunday with death figures in Pakistan being estimated at upto 30,000 while on the Indian side of Kashmir it has crossed 600 and could rise further as rescuers struggled to reach inaccessible areas.
POK communication Minister Tariq Mahmmod was quoted as saying that over 30,000 had perished in the region, many of them students.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, however, said so far over 19,000 people have lost their lives in the country with PoK accounting for more than 17,000.
Describing the tragedy as the "worst ever" in Pakistan's history, President Pervez Musharraf sought international assistance in the form of medicines, blankets, tents and helicopters to provide succour to the affected.
In Srinagar, Chief Secretary Vijay Bakaya said the death toll across the state has touched 600 and a pile of bodies have been recovered from debris of houses in Tangdhar and Uri areas.
The picture of more death and devastation in the valley surfaced as Army and Air Force personnel accessed areas hitherto untouched by rescue efforts even as fresh tremors and aftershock jolted parts of Jammu and Kashmir, creating further panic among the people.
Rescuers sifted through rubbles of flattened houses pulling out more bodies in the quake-hit valley as a large number of victims spent overnight under the open sky braving rains.
Toll certain to rise
IAF pilots who flew over Karnah in Keran sector in Kupwara district on the Line of Control for the first time this morning reported heavy devastation.
State government and army officials do not rule out the toll climbing further as several villages were yet to be reached by rescuers.
"The toll is expected to rise as there is no news from four villages in Teetwal area," a state government official said adding 3,000 houses had been razed in Tangdhar alone.
Using spades and bare hands, thousands of security personnel looked for survivors and dug out the dead in worst-hit Uri and Tangdhar areas and army and IAF helicopters ferried the injured to hospitals in Srinagar.
The army has also set up makeshift hospitals at a number of places.
Efforts are on to open up the arterial routes leading to the villages which have been cut off from the rest of state due to landslides, chief secretary Vijay Bakaya told PTI in Srinagar.
He said the death toll across the state so far has touched 600 even as a pile of bodies was recovered from the debris of houses in Tangdhar and Uri areas.
In Tangdhar alone, 280 bodies were pulled out on Sunday--257 civilians, 19 army personnel and three BSF men, Bakaya said.
Altogether 63 people, five Border Road Organization personnel and 58 labourers hired by it, were buried by a massive landslide on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad highway between Uri and Aman Setu a porton of which also caved in, Uri SP Madan Lal said.
Bakaya said 325 deaths were recorded in Baramulla district with most of them in Uri sector while six deaths were reported in Srinagar district.
Eighteen deaths were recorded in Poonch and other areas of Jammu region along the LoC.
Army choppers undertook numerous sorties ferrying medicines and relief materials to remote areas and airlifted 100 injured people by this evening to the base hospital, Defence Spokesman Col H Joneja said.
IAF, besides rushing planeloads of medicines and relief equipment, also airdropped 5000 food packets in areas which were not accessible by road or foot to the relief providing agencies.
Residents in many quake-hit areas complained of tardy pace of relief operations but officials said reaching many remote areas had been delayed due to landslides snapping road links.
In Islamabad, Sherpao said 70 per cent of the houses were damaged or flattened in Muzaffarbad while 60 per cent houses were hit in Rawalakot.
With the improvement in weather after overnight rains in Muzaffarabad, army along with local volunteers desperately searched for survivors in the rain-soaked collapsed houses as bodies piled up in graveyards for burial.
"Everything was over even before we realised fully what was happening," Rahim Ilahi, mourning the loss of his wife and two daughters was quoted as saying: "Rocks came tumbling down the mountainside, the houses fell like cards," Ilahi, a resident said, the horror still fresh in his eyes.
Streets lay strewn with remains of houses, trees uprooted and cables lay half hanging from the poles in the region.
Allah Akhbar
I guess it is too much to hope that bin Laden and Zawahiri are among them.
I think our appropriate religious and misc. dignataries should start talking about how the musillymen have brought this upon them selves by attacking americans in IRAQ and talking rudely to the true leaders of the world (the americans).
I trust these early estimates of fatalities about as much as Ray Nagin's.
Do you remember when Hillary came back from Alaska a couple of months ago and said there was devastation as far as she could see? I thought it was a stupid statement then, but after Katrina, Rita, Guatemala and now Pakistan, her statement is even more inane.
Have the msm and dems figured out how this is Bush's fault, yet.
As we send in aid by helicopter - let's use it as cover to get a hit squad right on top of OBL.
Not to worry, as soon as they can find a connection between global warming and eathquakes, they'll announce that it's all because of Pres. Bush.
Wasn't allah punishing us with Katrina??
Jesus has retaliated! LOL!
It's fun to throw this back in their face!! :-)
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