Posted on 10/11/2005 5:10:54 AM PDT by HAL9000
ISLAMABAD - As more reports of cities and villages being totally reduced to rubble in NWFP and AJK pour in, the confirmed death toll currently put at 20,000 by the government is likely to go beyond 200,000.According to estimates the death toll in Hazara division alone may rise close to 100,000. This includes the death of 60,000 or more in Balakot, 1,000 in Battagram, and hundreds more in Mansehra, and Abbottabad districts.
Dozens of villages have turned into mounds of earth; the number of their dead will take a long time coming.
The situation in Azad Kashmir is horrifying, with dozens of towns, villages, and hamlets turned into huge graveyards. Muzaffarabad alone is feared to account for more than 20,000 dead.
The beautiful city of Bagh (Garden) in Azad Kashmir has been wiped out completely. It is feared that more than 70,000 are dead in that unfortunate city.
The death toll in areas beyond Balakot and Karlot has not been confirmed yet as there is no access to Kaghan Valley by road from Balakot.
According to some estimates thousands of casualties are expected in these areas too once a road link is established and rescuers can go in. The relief efforts have been marred by the lack of heavy machinery and landslides on the roads that have severed the affected areas from the entire country.
As the hundreds of critically injured succumb to their injured, the death toll is rising in hospitals and relief camps.
News of heavy loss of life from far flung areas of remote Kohistan has also started coming in.
It will take another week or so at the very least before some estimations of the loss of life there could be determined.
200,000? Wow. I wonder though, if figures are inflated in order to get more international aid. I don't mean to be hard, but just a thought.
Poor souls. This figure doesn't take into account the health and shelter problems facing two and a half million displaced people. Unfortunately, they don't have anything resembling the Astrodome in that region....
The 200,000 figure came from the guy who counted the attendees at the Million Man March.
Hopefully that number is more doom and gloom and not a reality.
I don't believe estimates like these. Remember "over 10,000 dead in New Orleans"? Only a thorough count tells the truth. And I don't think that is being done.
How many are reported to have died in the Banda Acha tsunami?
Pakistan is a very densely populated country and the death toll might well be horrific. It already is, for that matter.
As always western charities are pitching in, but I'd like to know how much aid is being provided by Muslim charities?
I thought the same thing. I would like to hear the "Allah Akbar" crowd spin this.
They will spin it as "We allowed too many unislamic ways into muslim lands" or "We have not killed enough infidels lately" so allah is giving us a nudge...
Tragic.
>>>How many are reported to have died in the Banda Acha tsunami?<<<
I have read between 175,000 and 225,000.
Doing better than I am, I have ZERO sympathy.
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They weren't alone...remember the threads praising that loco pastor in Texas who said that NOLA was Sodom & Gamorrah? According to these fine Christian Americans Katrina was God's broom and the storm was sent there to change their ways.
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