October 8, 2005

• This Just In:

  
  

  

  
  

  Quake Kills More Than 3,000 in South Asia

  
  

  By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA, Associated Press Writer
  7 minutes ago

  
  

  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – A huge earthquake triggered landslides, toppled an apartment building and flattened villages of mud-brick homes Saturday, killing more than 3,000 people across a mountainous swath touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
   
  The casualty toll from the 7.6-magnitude tremor was rising early Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from the wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck. The worst damage was in Pakistan, where the dead included 250 girls crushed at a school and 200 soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

  
  

  For hours, aftershocks rattled an area stretching from Afghanistan across northern Pakistan into India’s portion of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing tremors could cause more damage.

  
  

  The earthquake, which struck just before 9 a.m., caused buildings to sway for about a minute in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area some 625 miles across. Panicked people ran from homes and offices, and communications were cut to many areas.

  
  

  Most of the devastation occurred in the mountains of northern Pakistan. 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.

  
  

  “It is a national tragedy,” said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan’s chief army spokesman. “This is the worst earthquake in recent times.”

  
  

  In Mansehra, a shopowner named Haji Fazal Ilahi stood vigil over the body of his 14-year-old daughter, which lay under a sheet on a hospital mattress. He said his wife, another daughter and a brother also died when the family’s house fell.

  
  

  “I could see rocks and homes tumbling down the mountains,” said Ilahi, who was driving to his village of Garlat when the quake struck. “When I reached my village, there was nothing left of my home.”

  
  

  India’s government offered condolences and assistance to Pakistan, a longtime rival with which it has been pursuing peace efforts after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

  
  

  “While parts of India have also suffered from this unexpected natural disaster, we are prepared to extend any assistance with rescue and relief which you may deem appropriate,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a message to Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

  
  

  India reported at least 250 people killed and 800 injured when the quake collapsed 2,700 houses and other buildings in Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths occurred in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and in the city of Srinagar, said B.B. Vyas, the state’s divisional commissioner.

  
  

  Telephone lines were down. Some bridges developed cracks, but traffic was reported to be passing over them.

  
  

  A senior Pakistani army officer said 200 soldiers were killed by debris and landslides in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

  
  

  About 1,000 civilians died in that region, said Sardar Mohammed Anwar, the top government official in the area.

  
  

  “This is my conservative guess, and the death toll could be much higher,” Anwar told Pakistan’s Aaj television station, adding that most homes in Muzaffarabad, the area’s capital, were damaged, and schools and hospitals collapsed.

  
  

  The death toll was at least 1,600 in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, said Akram Durani, the province’s top elected official.

  
  

  Ataullah Khan Wazir, police chief in the northwestern district of Mansehra, said authorities there pulled the bodies of 250 students from the wreckage of one girls’ school in the village of Ghari Habibibullah. About 500 students were injured, he said.

  
  

  Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

  
  

  Mansehra, about 90 miles northwest of the capital, 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 sources told The Associated Press in 2002.

  
  

  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.
  

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  “These are the Times of Sorrows”. More agony to be suffered by humanity, and this time, far away from “my” home, America. Again, my heart bleeds for the fate of humanity, at the odds with geology and nature, which will always win. No matter what. So many times news stories such as this have been sent to the back pages of the main section of daily newspapers across America. When an earthquake happens in a “third world” area, thousands more die than would in a disaster in America, because the structures are very old, and not “earthquake proof”. There but for the grace of God, go I. MFN 10/08
  

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  Associated Press reporters Munir Ahmad, Sadaqat Jan, Riaz Khan and Asif Shahzad contributed to this report. Edited by MFN deleting the “US response” to the tragedy.
  

  • 6:28 pm
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