Earthquake death toll rises to 30,000
Randeep Ramesh in Rawalakot
Monday October 10, 2005 [excerpts]
The Guardian

More than 30,000 people were killed by this weekend's powerful earthquake centred below the Hindu Kush mountain range in Pakistan, sending shockwaves across south Asia and reducing cities and villages to rubble.

The majority of the deaths from the quake, which measured 7.7 on the Richter scale and struck early Saturday morning, were in Pakistan. One state minister estimated that 30,000 people were killed in Pakistani Kashmir alone. In Indian Kashmir more than 600 were reported dead. At least 50,000 were believed to be injured. The UN estimated that more than 2.5 million people needed shelter.

The quake flattened dozens of villages. It killed farmers, students, soldiers and schoolchildren, and triggered landslides that blocked rescuers from many areas where bodies lay in streets.
Six US army helicopters are expected to arrive today to airlift the injured from the worst-hit city, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, where 11,000 people died.

The quake and its aftershocks were felt from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. Buildings were wrecked in an area spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in Indian Kashmir.

Many survivors were left without shelter in near-freezing nighttime temperatures. In India's portion of Kashmir, villagers burned wood from their collapsed homes for warmth.

There were warnings from relief agencies that children could make up half the population of the quake-affected areas and would be vulnerable to hunger, cold, illness and trauma. On the roads into the foothills of the Himalayas from Islamabad displaced villagers had gathered for shelter.

The Guardian was the first western news organisation to reach Rawalakot, a normally bustling market town in Pakistani Kashmir, 87 miles from Islam. It is also home to a brigade of the Pakistani army. Perched in the the western Himalayas, the town's university, law courts and shopping market had collapsed, encasing hundreds of bodies in tombs of brick, wood and concrete.

Locals said there was no electricity to give them light, no running water for bathing and cooking, no working landlines on which to phone family and friends or get out the word about the rapidly deteriorating conditions.