Re: Earthquake in Pakistan/International Relief/After Shocks (merged threads)
Children in Muzaffarabad’s front line
By Neil Arun
BBC News, Muzaffarabad
Awaiz Asmat had expected to receive a new pair of shoes for Eid this year, replacing his tattered old trainers.
Barely days before the big festival, his mother watched as those old trainers were drawn from the rubble of the school, along with the crushed body of her 12-year-old son.
A final burial was arranged four weeks after he died for a boy who had impressed his teachers with his memory of the Koran and infuriated his mother with demands for sweet cola drinks and a precocious taste for chewing tobacco.
“At least now I have a grave I can pray at,” says his mother, Musarrad, tears streaming down her face.
The family says it lost nine members - mostly children - to the earthquake that levelled this city four weeks ago, at the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In shock
MUZAFFARABAD QUAKE IMPACT
Pakistan death toll: 73,276
Death toll in Muzaffarabad district: 33,724
Population of Muzaffarabad district in 2002: 833,000
Children killed by quake: 17,000
Sources: Unicef; local government
Detailed map of quake zone
As Ramadan approaches its climax with the festival of Eid, there is little festive cheer in this household.
Musarrad says she has nothing to live for - her husband died a decade ago and the sewing school she worked in to support her family was destroyed in the quake.
She rests her head on the younger of her two surviving sons, Ahsaan. Thirteen-year-old Ahsaan is silent and withdrawn, half the hairs on his head turned white by shock.
He too was meant to have been at school on the day of the earthquake - but arriving late, he instead ended up playing in the yard and was spared the fate of his brother.
“Only 14 out of 40 children escaped that classroom alive,” he murmurs, staring at the floor.
Games in the dust
According to the United Nations’ children’s fund, Unicef, children account for almost one-third of deaths in the earthquake.
Unicef teams in Muzaffarabad have been working with some of the quake’s most vulnerable victims - the children, many themselves injured, who survived to see their friends buried.
Shabnam (r) clasps her wounded left eye as her mother looks on
Near a school set up in a tent, we are introduced to Shabnam, a 12-year-old with a hand permanently clasped against a wounded left eye.
“I went upstairs to fetch a pen for my teacher when the school’s floor began to shake like a swing,” she says.
Her mother found her covered in blood and keeps hugging her, grateful she survived. “She used to pester us to buy her new clothes every Eid,” says her mother. “But this year she has asked for nothing.”
A crowd gathers around the tent school and more tales of loss emerge.
But among the sobbing adults, there are also some smiling faces - the first I have seen all day. These are children too young to grieve, devising new games in the dust of the refugee camps.
The young who were at the front line of Kashmir’s earthquake are raising the first laughs from its rubble.
(source:BBC NEWS | South Asia | Laptop link-up: Muzaffarabad's plight)