Quake toll rises to 18,000 in worst-hit Pakistan

By Mian Khursheed

MANSEHRA, Pakistan (Reuters) – The death toll from a huge
south Asia earthquake rose to 18,000 in worst-hit Pakistan
alone on Sunday, as rescuers dug out hundreds of dead children
buried under their schools and found villages reduced to
rubble.

Teams laboured with cranes and earth-moving equipment or
used their bare hands in hopes of finding survivors trapped
beneath shattered masonry from Saturday’s quake.

Striking out from the forest clad mountains of Pakistani
Kashmir near the border with India, the quake was the strongest
to hit south Asia in a century.

“When the earthquake came it was like Judgment Day,” said
villager Fazal Elahi, recalling the horror of houses collapsing
around him as he grieved quietly next to the body of his
14-year-old daughter.

A Pakistani military official said 18,000 were dead,
confirming a figure given to CNN by President Pervez
Musharraf’s spokesman, Major-General Shaukat Sultan.

A further 40,000 people were injured in the 7.6 magnitude
quake that struck nearly 24 hours ago, Sultan said, calling it
the worst devastation in Pakistan’s history.

“There are many villages that have been wiped off the face
of this earth,” Sultan said.

Pakistan’s side of Kashmir, the Himalayan region disputed
with India, was expected to be worst hit.

Many areas had not been reached because landslides
triggered by the quake had wiped out roads, Sultan said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the tremor occurred at a
depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). It struck about 95 km (60 miles)
northeast of Islamabad and was felt across the subcontinent,
shaking buildings in the Afghan, Indian and Bangladeshi
capitals.

The first quake was followed over the next 18 hours by more
than 20 aftershocks with magnitudes of between 4.5 and 6.3.

SCHOOLS CRUSHED

Some 400 children were killed at two schools in Pakistan’s
North West Frontier Province.

Damage in Pakistani Kashmir’s main city, Muzaffarabad, was
believed to be severe.

“Indications are that almost 50 percent of the homes have
been destroyed,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told BBC World
television, referring to Muzaffarabad and neighbouring towns.

Private Geo TV reported that some of Muzaffarabad’s main
buildings, including a military hospital, had been destroyed,
and that injured people were lying in the courtyard of the one
working hospital waiting for attention from doctors struggling
to cope.

A military spokesman said 215 Pakistani soldiers were
killed in the hardest-hit areas.

Indian Kashmir was also battered by the earthquake. Police
said more than 300 people had been killed and hundreds injured.

Half of the Indian deaths were in Uri, the last big town on
the road connecting the two sides of the violence-scarred
region. The dead included 15 soldiers, some in bunkers close to
a military ceasefire line.

Landslides blocked the 300-km (190-mile) road that connects
Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, to the rest of
India to the south. The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road linking
Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, reopened to traffic this year for
the first time in nearly 60 years, was also blocked.

Ghulam Rashool, an official at the Pakistan Meteorological
Department, said it was the strongest earthquake in South Asia
since the 1905 Kangra earthquake that killed 20,000 people in
India’s Madhya Pradesh state.

In the Pakistani capital Islamabad, 82 survivors were
recovered from two multi-storey apartment blocks that were
reduced to rubble. A government official said rescuers also
found 14 bodies, including those of at least three foreigners,
an Egyptian and two Japanese.

Pledges of aid from around the world came within hours.

President George W. Bush said U.S. aid was on the way and
Britain said it was sending search and rescue experts, sniffer
dogs and aid workers.

U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sent condolences to
Pakistan, and a U.N. Disaster and Coordination Team in Geneva
was on standby to be deployed. Oxfam and other aid agencies
planned to coordinate their response with the United Nations.

Turkey, which has suffered major earthquakes in the past,
said it had sent two military planes carrying aid, doctors and
rescue workers. Japan sent a team of 49 aid workers.

In a further sign of easing tension between India and
Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf to offer assistance.

(Additional reporting by Robert Birsel and Suzanna Koster
in Islamabad, Kamil Zaheer in Baramulla, Y.P. Rajesh in New
Delhi)