Quake Kills More Than 20,000 in South Asia

BALAKOT, Pakistan — A massive earthquake cut a swath of destruction across South Asia Saturday, killing more than 25,000 people. The worst destruction was in and near the Pakistani side of the divided and disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, where the quake flattened dozens of villages and towns, crushing schools and mud-brick houses.

At least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets of Balakot, a devastated village of about 30,000 just west of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, where the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck South Asia shortly before 9 a.m. was centered. Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands through the debris of a collapsed school, searching for children that were heard crying beneath the rubble.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said 19,136 people were killed, 17,388 of them in Pakistani Kashmir. The worst-hit city in Pakistani Kashmir was its capital, Muzaffarabad, where 11,000 died, Sherpao said. He also said 42,397 were injured.

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

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf appealed to the international community to help with relief efforts. He appealed for medicine, tents, cargo helicopters and financial assistance. The United States, the United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan, German and India all offered assistance.

"We do seek international assistance. We have enough manpower but we need financial support … to cope with the tragedy," Musharraf said. He said supplies were needed "to reach out to the people in far-flung and cut-off areas." The president spoke in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, before leaving on a tour of devastated areas.

The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area stretching across some 625 miles across. 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.

Authorities in India reported 360 deaths and 900 people injured, while Afghanistan reported four killed.

On Sunday, Pakistani military helicopters ferried troops and supplies to some hard-hit areas. But 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 four and six, 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.

Nearby, Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old business administration student, stood outside the rubble of his four-story school, where at least 250 pupils were feared trapped. Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without any tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies.

Farooq said that he could hear children under the rubble crying for help immediately after the disaster on Saturday.

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

A 40-year-old man at the scene wept. He said four of his children were buried in the debris.

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

In Pakistan’s northwestern district of Mansehra, police chief Ataullah Khan Wazir said authorities there pulled 250 bodies 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.

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.

The only serious damage reported in Pakistan’s capital 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.

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.

On Sunday, Pakistani rescue teams pulled two survivors from the rubble of the apartment building. 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 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 within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing tremors could cause 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.

India reported at least 360 people killed and 900 injured when the quake collapsed houses and other buildings in Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths were in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and in the city of Srinagar, said B.B. Vyas, the state’s divisional commissioner.

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.