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Kashmir quake toll nears 40,000; rain hits relief

Posted on: Saturday, 15 October 2005, 11:43 CDT

By David Fox

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan raised the death toll from the Kashmir earthquake to 38,000 on Saturday and said it could go higher after one of the most devastating earthquakes to hit South Asia in recorded history.

One week after the disaster the jump in the toll from around 25,000 came with confirmation of more fatalities from remote mountain valleys and the town of Balakot.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he was unsure whether army rescuers had reached all affected areas and he expected more bodies could be found once routes into the Jhelum and Neelum valleys were cleared of landslides.

"I think it is going to rise," President Pervez Musharraf told a news conference after his aides released the latest official toll. Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province bore the brunt of the earthquake one week ago.

Relief flights in and out of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, were severely disrupted on Saturday by rain and only a few helicopters managed to take off from a makeshift landing pad in a sports field.

The aid effort has picked up steam in recent days after a difficult start due to a shortage of helicopters needed to reach remote mountain towns and roads blocked by landslides.

PRAYERS

Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since winning independence from Britain in 1947, and on the Indian side of the ceasefire line dividing the disputed region 1,300 people were confirmed dead.

Some 3,000 Muslims gathered in Pakistan's largest mosque, Shah Faisal in Islamabad, for prayers exactly one week after the quake just before 9 a.m. (0400 GMT) on October 8.

"Oh Allah give courage to those who survived this disaster to endure this hardship," the cleric prayed, his voice breaking with sobs as he called Pakistanis who died in the quake martyrs.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck just outside Muzaffarabad, a city of 70,000 people 100 km (62 miles) northeast of Islamabad, at the foothills of the Himalayas, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

The new death toll puts it on the same scale as the earthquake that almost destroyed the Pakistani city of Quetta in 1935.

Between 30,000 and 60,000 people are estimated to have died in the Quetta quake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A earthquake in Bam, Iran, in 2003 killed 31,000 people.

The main concern as relief operations moved from rescue to rehabilitation was to provide shelter.

The United Nations estimates that more than a million have been made homeless -- local authorities put the figure at up to 2.5 million -- and winter is approaching rapidly.

"TENTS, TENTS, TENTS"

"The number one priority is shelter," Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a news conference. "We need tents, tents, tents."

U.N. chief emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said three times as many helicopters were needed to deliver relief.

"This is a very major earthquake but it is ... aggravated a thousand times by the topography," he told Reuters. "An earthquake is bad anywhere, in the Himalayas it becomes much worse."

About $500 million in overseas aid has been pledged and more than $50 million has been raised domestically, while the United Nations increased its appeal for Pakistan to over $300 million.

Aziz said the damage was estimated at $5 billion and the United Nations says recovery could take up to ten years.

In the absence of organised camps, tent cities sprung up in Muzaffarabad made up of plastic awnings, old signboards and a few real tents.

Refugees burn wood from the rubble still wet from the rain, plastic bags and bottles or even donated clothing -- whatever they can find to keep warm and cook.

Forecasters said isolated thunderstorms followed by a cold snap that will bring night-time temperatures to as low as three degrees Centigrade (37 degrees Fahrenheit) at the weekend.

"It is very difficult. My children are crying all the time," said Nasreen Ikram, her daughter by her side chanting softly "Allah, Allah" (God).

The smell of burning plastic hung in the air of Ikram's camp, housing some 2,000 people, along with the stench of dead bodies still entombed in rubble.

With the chances of finding anyone alive fading fast, some international rescue teams have begun to leave.

Musharraf said rescue work would continue, although experts suggest it would be a miracle if anyone survived for eight days.

British rescuers continued their search at Islamabad's Margala Towers apartment block, the capital's only significant damage, where a Swedish woman and three children and a Spanish man are among the 30 missing.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom, Faisal Aziz and Zeeshan Haider in ISLAMABAD)

(For more news about emergency relief visit Reuters AlertNet http://www.alertnet.org email: alertnet@reuters.com; +44 207 542 2432)

Source: REUTERS

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