Over 18,000 dead in South Asian quake

SwordFish_13

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Hi,

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_40887996_pakistan_quake6_map416.gif


Source:CNN News

Uri and Kupwara are market towns in a Himalayan valley of preternatural beauty which, for half a century, have endured the fear, death and trauma of being on the frontline of one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth, that of India and Pakistan. On Saturday, nature turned on them too.

At mid-morning, an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck just west of Kashmir's Line of Control, along which hundreds of thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops face off in bunkers and artillery installations and over which they have fought two wars and countless skirmishes and nearly came to a nuclear confrontation in 2002. The result: At least 18,000 dead, the majority of them on the Pakistani side of the disputed territory.

"Destruction is massive in Uri," an Indian army spokesman told TIME. "It's close to the epicenter. Initial reports are that not many houses are standing." As buildings crumbled, he added, gas pipes ruptured and fires swept the central market in the town just across the Line of Control on the Indian side of Kashmir. Simultaneously, landslides cut off Uri, and much of the surrounding area, from the world and swatted two buses full with passengers into a rocky mountain gorge. Sixteen Indian soldiers were buried alive in a bunker at Uri. The Police Inspector General of Police, Javed Mukhdoomi, had definite information on one town, Dangdar, near Kupwara. "Almost the entire town has been razed," he said. The Indian army spokesman also had his certainties. The final count of dead would be "very high," he said.

Tens of thousands of people have died in a civil war between Indian security forces and Muslim insurgents demanding either independence from India or union with Pakistan. But the earthquake managed to instill new levels of fear. "I'm 86," said Gul Muhammad Butt. "Never in my life have I experienced anything like it."

In the Pakistan, military rescue pilots who flew over Himalayan valleys on their side of the border saw scores of villages pulverized by landslides unleashed by the quake. Pakistani officials also say that the mountain town of Muzaffarabad, also on the Line of Control, with a population of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, is "70% destroyed".

The earthquake was dramatically felt in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf climbed over the rubble of a flattened apartment building in Islamabad to spur on rescue workers trying to free dozens of families trapped underneath collapsed slabs of concrete. "It is a test for all of us, the entire nation," the president said as he returned to army headquarters to coordinate relief efforts in the mountainous northern areas of Pakistan that were worst hit. He dispatched 10 M-17 helicopters to rescue people in the stricken areas. How Musharraf handles the relief operations will certainly be a test for his six-year old military rule. His popularity has fallen due to recent gas price hikes and his refusal to allow the leaders of the mainstream political parties to return from exile.

How would the catastrophe affect relations in the region—which, apart from the Pakistani and Indian armed forces, includes a sizeable U.S. military presence in Afghanistan? In a rare gesture of friendship between the two hostile nations, India said it would send rescue workers to help Pakistan, if requested. Meanwhile, the helicopters Musharraf dispatched to help victims of the earthquake were diverted from duty scouring the Afghan-Pakistan border for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, one Islamabad official said. Reporters who wanted to travel to the ravaged regions were told they could be flown into the worst hit areas of Uri but were unlikely to be brought back immediately as the military helicopters were pressed into service mainly to bring the injured in for treatment. Could U.S. troops and aircraft in Afghanistan be deployed? That question is a sensitive one on the Pakistani side because of America's unpopularity in the Islamic country.

The catastrophe prompted scenes of dread and supplication unusual even for strife-torn Kashmir. Families wandered the streets, refusing to return to their homes. Children and women wailed in the open. Schools, whose examination halls had been filled with students taking their high school diplomas, were deserted, answer sheets scattered on the floor. When the tremors hit, people rushed screaming into the street. When they found open ground, families began offering special naful prayers, while others knelt on the roadside and began reciting the Quran. Loudspeakers in the mosques urged the faithful to seek forgiveness. "I thought doomsday had fallen," said Abdur Rashid Hajjam, as he came out of prayers at a Sufi shrine. "Pray for our brethren who died today and thank Allah for we are safe," said the imam at Illahi Bagh mosque on the outskirts of Srinagar, which lies in Indian-ruled Kashmir. "Whatever the scientists say, our Prophet said that when this earth is replete with sin, this would happen." As evening fell, the thanksgiving prayer, Nimaz-e-shukrana, echoed from every mosque in Kashmir.

Kashmir's hospitals were treating trauma that religion couldn't heal. Dr. Anwar Hussein said his SMHS hospital in Srinagar received some injured, but most of the 270 patients admitted, their nerves frayed by 16 long years of war, were suffering from "palpitations and shock." Other hospitals were unable to provide the same succor. Many had developed cracks, and patients and nurses alike were refusing to enter.


PEace
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Hi,

Source:Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A powerful earthquake flattened entire villages of mud-brick homes, triggered landslides and toppled a 10-story apartment building on Saturday, killing more than 18,000 people as it devastated a mountainous swath touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

Pakistan's private Aaj television reported the Pakistani death toll had jumped to 25,000. But the report, which included casualties in Pakistani-controlled
Kashmir, gave no source for its figures and there was no immediate confirmation from Pakistani officials but they have said the toll will rise.

The casualty toll from the 7.6-magnitude tremor rose sharply Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from the wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief army spokesman said early Sunday that more than 18,000 had been killed — 17,000 of them in Pakistani Kashmir, where the quake was centered. Some 41,000 people were injured, he said.

"The death toll is gradually rising," Sultan told The Associated Press. He said authorities had counted the bodies.

For hours, aftershocks rattled an area stretching from Afghanistan across northern Pakistan into India's portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing tremors could cause more damage, and many people spent the night in the open.

The earthquake, which struck just before 9 a.m. Saturday, caused buildings to sway for about a minute in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area some 625 miles across. Panicked people ran from homes and offices, and communications were cut to many areas.

Most of the devastation occurred in the mountains of northern Pakistan, where the dead included 250 girls crushed at a school and 200 soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

The
U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad, in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, and was followed by 22 aftershocks, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.

"It is a national tragedy," Sultan said earlier. "This is the worst earthquake in recent times."

In Mansehra, about 90 miles northwest of the Pakistani capital, a shopowner named Haji Fazal Ilahi stood vigil over the body of his 14-year-old daughter, which lay under a sheet on a hospital mattress. He said his wife, another daughter and a brother also died when the family's house fell.

"I could see rocks and homes tumbling down the mountains," said Ilahi, who was driving to his village of Garlat when the quake struck. "When I reached my village, there was nothing left of my home."

India's government offered condolences and assistance to Pakistan, a longtime rival with which it has been pursuing peace efforts after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

"While parts of India have also suffered from this unexpected natural disaster, we are prepared to extend any assistance with rescue and relief which you may deem appropriate," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a message to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

India reported at least 340 people killed injured when the quake collapsed 2,700 houses and other buildings in Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths occurred in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and in the city of Srinagar, said B.B. Vyas, the state's divisional commissioner.

Some 215 Pakistani soldiers died in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, Sultan said. On the India side of the border, at least 39 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

In Pakistan's northwestern district of Mansehra, the police chief, Ataullah Khan Wazir, said authorities there pulled the bodies of 250 students from the wreckage of one girls' school in the village of Ghari Habibibullah. Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

Mansehra was believed to be a hotbed of Islamic militant activity during the time the Taliban religious militia ruled neighboring Afghanistan. Al-Qaida operatives trained suicide squads at a camp there, Afghan and Pakistani officials told The Associated Press in 2002.

Afghanistan appeared to suffer the least damage. In its east, an 11-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall in her home collapsed, police official Gafar Khan said.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, said the quake was felt at Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, but he had no reports of damage at bases around the country.

The
United Nations sent an emergency coordination team to Pakistan.

President Bush offered condolences, and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said the United States was ready to help.

"At this difficult time, the United States stands with its friends in Pakistan and India, just as they stood with us and offered assistance after Hurricane Katrina," Rice said in a statement.

In Pakistan, Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ordered the military to extend "all-out help" to quake-hit areas and appealed to the nation to stay calm.

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas, but landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts.

The only serious damage reported in Pakistan's capital was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 10 people were killed and 126 were injured. Hospital doctors said the dead included an Egyptian diplomat, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said two Japanese were killed.

A man named Rehmatullah who lived near the apartment building said dust enveloped the wreckage.

"I rushed down, and for some time you could not see anything because of the dust. Then we began to look for people in the rubble," he said. "We pulled out one man by cutting off his legs."

"It was like hell," added Nauman Ali, who lives in a nearby building. "I was tossed up in my bed and the ceiling fan struck against the roof."

Aided by two large cranes, hundreds of police and soldiers helped remove chunks of concrete, one of which was splattered with blood. One rescue worker said he heard faint cries from people trapped in the rubble.

In Abbotabad, north of Islamabad, dozens of injured quake victims and other patients lay on the lawn of the city hospital as staff with loudspeakers appealed to the public for food and other relief supplies.

One of the injured was an 8-year-old boy, Qadeer, whose father, a farmer named Jehangir, said the only buildings left standing in their village were a mosque and a school. Qadeer lay unconscious, his right leg heavily bandaged.

Authorities laid out dozens of bodies under sheets in a damaged sports stadium in Muzaffarabad.



Peace
-=SF-13=-
 
Hi,

Source:Associated Press

death toll ranged between nearly 20,000 and 30,000

BALAKOT, Pakistan - Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake. Pakistani officials said the death toll ranged between nearly 20,000 and 30,000.

Pakistan called Saturday's magnitude-7.6 earthquake the country's worst on record, and the president appealed for urgent help. Rival India, which reported more than 465 dead, offered assistance.

"I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in
Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.

In mountainous Kashmir, the quake flattened dozens of villages and towns, crushing schools and mud-brick houses. The dead included 250 girls at a school razed to the ground and more than 200 Pakistani soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central
Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of three nations, with the damage spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in northern Indian territory. In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed.

"We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan's history," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

Officials said Balakot was one of the hardest-hit areas. Near the ruins of one collapsed school, at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets of the devastated village of about 30,000. At least 250 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of the four-story school.

Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies. Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old business administration student, said he had heard children under the rubble crying for help immediately after Saturday's disaster.

"Now there's no sign of life," he said Sunday. "We can't do this without the army's help. Nobody has come here to help us."

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. However, landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts, blocking roads to some remote areas.

There was no sign of government help in Balakot, in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles north of Islamabad. The quake leveled the village's main bazaar, crushing shoppers and strewing gas cylinders, bricks, tomatoes and onions on the streets.

Injured people covered by shawls lay in the street, waiting for medical care. Residents carried bodies on wooden planks. The corpses of four children, aged between 4 and 6, lay under a sheet of corrugated iron. Relatives said they were trying to find sheets to wrap the bodies.

"We don't have anything to bury them with," said a cousin, Saqib Swati.

Elsewhere in Balakot, shop owner Mohammed Iqbal said two primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, also collapsed. More than 500 students were feared dead.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf appealed to the international community for medicine, tents, cargo helicopters and financial assistance.

"We do seek international assistance. We have enough manpower but we need financial support ... to cope with the tragedy," Musharraf said.

Supplies were needed "to reach out to the people in far-flung and cut-off areas," he said in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, before leaving on a tour of devastated areas.

The United States, the
United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany all offered assistance.

In Pakistan's northwestern district of Mansehra, police chief Ataullah Khan Wazir said Saturday that authorities there pulled 250 bodies from the rubble of a girls' school in the village of Ghari Habibibullah. Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

Mansehra was believed to be a hotbed of Islamic militant activity during the time the Taliban religious militia ruled neighboring Afghanistan. Al-Qaida operatives trained suicide squads at a camp there, Afghan and Pakistani officials told The Associated Press in 2002.

At least 215 Pakistani soldiers died in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, Sultan said. On the India side of the border, at least 54 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

The only serious damage reported in Islamabad was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 24 people were killed and dozens were injured. Doctors said the dead included an Egyptian diplomat, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said two Japanese were killed.

On Sunday, Pakistani rescue teams pulled two survivors from the rubble. The boy and woman, who were listed in stable condition, told doctors others were trapped alive and calling for help beneath the debris.

"These people heard voices and cries during the whole night," said Adil Inayat, a doctor at PIMS hospital in Islamabad.

The death toll in India rose Sunday to 465 after rescue workers and soldiers pulled out 90 more bodies in the frontier Tangdar region, 65 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths were in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and Srinagar, where the quake collapsed houses and buildings.

Afghanistan reported four killed.

The
U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of Islamabad in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir. That was followed by at least 22 aftershocks within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing more damage, and many people spent the night in the open.

India, a longtime rival of Pakistan, offered help and condolences in a gesture of cooperation. The nuclear rivals have been pursuing peace after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

Afghanistan appeared to suffer the least damage. In its east, an 11-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall in her home collapsed, police official Gafar Khan said. Three others also died.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara, said the quake was felt at Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, but there were no reports of damage at bases around the country.

An eight-member U.N. team of top disaster coordination officials was due to arrive in Islamabad on Sunday to plan the global body's response.

President Bush offered condolences, and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said the United States was ready to help.



Peace
-=SF_13=-
 
I've been away since yesterday, so I didn't hear about this until today... :?

I'm pretty sure I know what this months Milcharity donation will go to now..


RIP! :salute2:
 
Hi,

Death Toll Update


Source:CNN News

Quake toll soars above 30,000

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The death toll has soared to 30,800 in the aftermath of the worst earthquake to hit Pakistan, as nations around the world try to get aid to the northern parts of the devastated country and to Kashmir.

Pakistan says it has been overwhelmed by the disaster, but the international community is beginning to come through after President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pleaded for helicopters to get relief supplies to people in remote and mountainous towns and villages.

The 7.6-magnitude quake on Saturday morning was felt across South Asia, from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh, shaking three nations and bringing down a large apartment building in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. (See video on survivors pulled from rubble )

About 43,000 people were injured in the quake, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday.

Regarding the casualty figures, he said: "They will certainly go up."


Source:BBC News


Indian Kashmir quake toll rises

The death toll in the powerful earthquake which struck Indian-administered Kashmir has risen to 865, officials say.

Over 2,300 people have been injured and some 4,000 houses damaged in the state in Saturday's earthquake.

Officials say that the death toll is likely to rise further as rescue operations continue and many affected villages still remain inaccessible.

The majority of the state's deaths were in the Kashmir valley, reports say.

Military aircraft have been air dropping burial shrouds and food to remote villages, the Associated Press reports.


Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to tour the affected areas on Tuesday.

Federal interior secretary VK Duggal told reporters in Delhi that 794 civilians and 71 soldiers had died in the earthquake in Indian-administered Kashmir.
 
Hi,


_40896284_s_asia_quake_map416.gif


Source:TOI

ISLAMABAD: The death toll from the huge earthquake that rocked Pakistan is expected to reach more than 80,000.

Islamic Relief spokesman Waseem Yaqhoob told CNN he thought the death toll would reach "80,000, maybe more."

"This could get very close to tsunami levels," he said. "It's horrific. It really is terrible."

Meanwhile, the aid trickle aid materials reaching Islamabad are finding it difficult to reach the quake-hit mountainous areas due to torrential rains and the threat of mudslides.

In parts of northern Pakistan, India and the disputed region of Kashmir, the scene is one of utter devastation: entire villages destroyed, millions left homeless and survivors using anything they can to wade through mountains of rubble searching for survivors, food and clean water.

Meanwhile, a strong autumn cold front has started showing its signs in central Asia Tuesday, spawning severe storms.

According to Pakistani presidential spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, there still areas, most-affected, but could not be reached. "They are virtually impossible to reach," he said.


Peace
-=SF_13=-
 
I heard on the news yesterday that a women and a 5 years old girl was found alive yesterday, over 100 hours after the earthquake.
But the chances of finding survivors get's slimmer every hour now.. :(

And yes Swordfish, this months donation will definitely go to one of the organizations who are helping out in the crisis area..
 
"And yes Swordfish, this months donation will definitely go to one of the organizations who are helping out in the crisis area.." best news i have heard all day.

Last info i heard was their was i believe 75 Helo's in the area.( im not sure on that number).
 
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