Re: A hero from Sindh: Karam Umrani, a 28-year-old sub-inspector saves People
Pakistan Army is now mobilized. I hope we can rescue everyone who is trapped in the rubble.
Destruction, Death and Prayers
Casualty Toll Rises After 7.6 Earthquake Hits South Asia
Hundreds killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India.
By Paul Watson and Zulfiqar Ali
Special to the Times
1:07 PM PDT, October 8, 2005
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Pakistan and India mobilized their armed forces today to help rescue hundreds of people feared trapped or killed in northern villages devastated by a strong earthquake.
At least 845 people were confirmed dead in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan today, but that figure was expected to rise. Most of the casualties were in remote areas of northern Pakistan, where the earthquake’s epicenter was located in a mountainous region of the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Pakistani officials said the quake had killed at least 545 people, but estimated the death toll could exceed 1,000 in the mountainous north where scores of homes were flattened in the magnitude 7.6 quake.
The Associated Press reported a combined death toll for Pakistan, Afghanistan, India of more than 3,000 today.
Residents in North West Frontier Province said that about 250 bodies were recovered from the ruins of a girls’ school in Garhi area, near the town of Mansehra. Another 500 students were injured.
“Many villages have wiped out in the earthquake-hit areas of the province”, a witness, Abdul Makjeed, said by phone from the town of Mansehra, the province’s worst-affected area.
Around 370 people were reported killed in Mansehra. But a large number of bodies were lying on roads and under rubble and survivors were desperately searching for relief aid, Makjeed said.
Major cities in Pakistan and India did not suffer widespread damage. But two high-rise apartment buildings collapsed in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, and rescuers worked into the night trying to save scores of people believed trapped in the rubble.
Around 300 people died in Indian-controlled areas of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and scores of homes were damaged or destroyed in the region, said Mansoor Hussain, spokesman for the India’s chief minister in the territory.
More than 500 people were injured and 1,100 houses damaged or destroyed in Indian Kashmir, Hussain said by telephone from Srinagar, summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state. Heavy rain complicated relief efforts in the Kashmir Valley. At least two Afghans, both of them children, died near the eastern city of Jalalabad, which is close to the Pakistan border.
In Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, frantic survivors and rescue teams worked with their bare hands and cranes, trying to save dozens of people believed trapped in the rubble of two high-rise apartment buildings.
The 10-story buildings in the Margallah Towers complex, in an upscale district of the capital, had around 60 apartments, whose residents reportedly included foreign nationals.
Several bodies were carried out the sprawling pile of broken concrete and steel while rescuers worked to free other residents found alive.
Panicked residents of office workers spent hours in the streets, fearful that several aftershocks would bring damaged buildings down. The capital’s cell phone network was overloaded with people calling to check on friends and loved ones.
“In the overall context it is a test for all of us, the entire nation and we are sure we will meet this test,” Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said during a visit to the apartment complex.
Dressed in his army general’s uniform, Musharraf stumbled over large chunks of concrete as he surveyed the collapsed buildings.
Soon after the quake struck, Pakistan’s armed forces had helicopters and C-130 transport planes ready to ship emergency relief supplies into the affected areas, Musharraf added.
Pakistan’s military has numerous bases in the northern areas, especially in Kashmir. Rival claims for control of the Himalayan territory have caused two of three wars between Indian and Pakistan since Britain granted the subcontinent independence in 1947.
At least 350 people died in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, a territory bordering Afghanistan that Afghan intelligence officials claim Taliban militants have used as a base for cross-border attacks. Pakistan’s government denies the allegations.
In the northwestern city Abbotabad, residents said eight large buildings, including a hotel and a shopping centre, had collapsed.
Pakistan’s military said hundreds of troops were dispatched to quake-hit areas from Peshawar, the provincial capital of NWFP, where troops were also on standby in case of any unrest.
Two helicopters loaded with doctors, engineers and medicines have left Peshawar for Mansehra to coordinate relief activities in the affected areas, a military statement said. But poor visibility and bad weather were hampering rescue operations in some areas of northwest Pakistan, officials said.
In Rawalpindi, a suburb of the Pakistani capital that is home to many government officials and military officers, a girl was killed the wall of the Ganjmandi Girls High School collapsed, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported. Musharraf, who is also a general in command of the armed forces, met with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and ordered the military to provide all necessary help to civilian authorities in the quake-hit areas.
Today’s quake was the worst to hit Pakistan in at least 20 years. A more devastating 7.7 magnitude quake struck the Indian state of Gujarat in 2001, killing between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed and injuring around 166,000. The earthquake, whose epicenter was in the city of Bhuj, destroyed 783,000 buildings, most of them village homes.
Today’s quake struck just after 8:50 [CQ] a.m. and measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, while Pakistan’s monitoring agency said the quake was a slightly weaker magnitude 7.5.
Several brief aftershocks followed, one of which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was around 60 miles northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake was centered slightly over 6 miles underground in a mountainous region of the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan.
Around 500 miles away, in the Indian capital New Delhi, the earthquake was strong enough to make buildings sway for at least a minute. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed shock at the quake’s destruction and promised in a statement to pay just over $2,000 compensation to the next of kin of anyone who died in the earthquake.
In Indian Kashmir, Baramullah district was the hardest hit, with at least 142 dead. The quake also killed 25 members of India’s security forces along the Line of Control, the ceasefire line that divides Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Syed, the elected leader of Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, tried to tour the quake zone today but was forced to flee an angry crowd demanding the government deliver more emergency aid.
India’s army set up relief camps to provide rations and tents for quake victims in Uri and Poonch districts, two areas where militants that India says are supported by Pakistan frequently attack the security forces.
Helicopters from the Indian Air Force have been pressed into service and are carrying doctors and evacuating patients for treatment," said Indian Army spokesman Col. Sudhir Kumar Sakuja. “In fact, twenty civilians were evacuated from Uri to hospitals in Srinagar for treatment” today, he said.
At least 25 Indian troops died in Uri district on the LoC when barracks and bunkers collapsed in the quake. Eight more soldiers were seriously injured and 14 were reported missing, the Indian military said.
Times Staff Writer Watson reported from New Delhi and Special Correspondent Ali from Peshawar.