Hunt for survivors as toll tops 350
AFGHAN-PAKISTAN QUAKE
AFP
Rescuers were yesterday picking their way through rugged terrain and pockets of Taliban insurgency in the search for survivors after a massive quake hit Pakistan and Afghanistan, killing more than 350 people, reports AFP from Islamabad.
The toll was expected to rise as search teams reach remote areas that were cut off by Mondays powerful 7.5 magnitude quake, which triggered landslides and stampedes as it toppled buildings and severed communication lines.
A police official in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar told AFP they had not been able to get in touch with authorities in the district of Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to see how its population of nearly half a million people had fared.
There is no way to communicate with the officials in Kohistan, the communication system has been disrupted and roads blocked so we cannot say anything about the damage there, the official told AFP.
Authorities were also still struggling to ascertain the damage in the northern district of Chitral, where a local official said the quake had damaged the water supply system.
Around 80,000 people dont have access to clean drinking water and its our top priority to restore the water supply, he said. In other remote areas residents -- including children and the elderly -- were helping with relief work, many of them digging through rubble for survivors.
The bulk of the casualties recorded so far were in Pakistan, where 241 people were killed, including 196 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and more than 1,600 injured, disaster management authorities said.
Pakistan army helicopters were evacuating victims Tuesday to the provincial capital Peshawar and Rawalpindi, which borders Islamabad.
The military has also sent medical teams, tents and rations to affected areas.
For many, Mondays quake brought back traumatic memories of a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck in October 2005, killing more than 75,000 people and displacing some 3.5 million.
Muzaffarabad resident Shehnaz Rasheed, 34, whose daughter was killed in the 2005 disaster, said that as the quake struck she feared doomsday was being repeated.
I ran towards my childrens school leaving everything behind -- I did not even close the doors of my house and did not care for anything on the road, she told AFP, explaining she was frantic to reach her two sons so she could die together with them if we have to die.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan Tuesday after a visit to the US and said the government would announce a disaster relief package.
State media later reported he had flown to Shangla in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa -- believed to be one of the worst-hit districts with 49 reported dead so far -- where he promised survivors ample compensation so that they can rebuild better homes.
Two hundred rescuers have been deployed to the district. Afghan officials said at least 115 people were confirmed dead and hundreds more injured, with casualties reported from around half a dozen of the countrys 34 provinces, and some 7,000 homes reported damaged.
The government has implored aid agencies for assistance. But large swathes of Badakhshan, the remote province where the epicentre is located, and other quake-hit areas are effectively controlled by the Taliban, posing a huge challenge to any official aid efforts.
