Quake kills 'whole generation'

From correspondents in Islamabad
October 10, 2005

WHOLE generation had been wiped out in the areas most devastated by the weekend's huge quake in Pakistan, a military spokesman said today, as UNICEF estimated up to 40,000 had been killed in the disaster.

The roads leading into Pakistani-controlled Kashmir - the area worst affected by Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake - were blocked by landslides.
Power and water supplies were down, hospitals and schools destroyed.

A senior official said the quake had killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people in Pakistan and injured another 60,000.

The official toll remained at 19,000 but military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said it would rise.

Schoolchildren were the worst affected by the quake, Maj-Gen Sultan said.

"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas. The maximum number affected was schoolchildren," Maj-Gen Sultan said.
"Rescuers are pulling out dead children in Muzaffarabad but there is no one to claim the bodies which shows their parents are dead.

"Rawalakot has been destroyed. Muzaffarabad is 70 per cent destroyed. There is not a single house in Muzaffarabad which has not suffered damage. There is not a single famliy there that has not suffered."

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) spokeswoman Julia Spry Leverton said children were especially vulnerable and accounted for around 50 per cent of the population in the affected areas in northern Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

"We have been told by the Government that 30,000 to 40,000 died", Ms Leverton said in Islamabad.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the report.

"Between 30 to 40,000 people have died in Pakistan. 60,000-plus are injured," the official said.

It's a very bad situation. We are getting reports of casualties from all the affected areas, even now at this very moment."

Witnesses and correspondents say schools collapsed in almost every town and village across devastated northwestern Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir.

Many hundreds were trapped in the wreckage because the quake struck at the beginning of the school day and parents have been desperately digging at the rubble in the increasingly vain hope of getting them out.

In the northwestern town of Balakot, a young boy and girl were pulled alive from the rubble of their school two days after the quake struck, an AFP photographer said.

Volunteers and relatives of hundreds of parents at the Shaheen Public School in the devastated town of Balakot helped to get the two children out of the debris, the AFP photographer said.

Icy conditions

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors in the mountains of northeast Pakistan were desperately waiting for help after spending a second night in freezing temperatures.

In many villages and towns hardest hit, people dug through the night with their bare hands in an often futile attempt to reach friends and relatives trapped in the rubble.

The UN said more helicopters were urgently needed to bring rescue equipment and vital aid to stricken villages high in the Himalayas, where roads had been destroyed by landslides.

"We are seeing enormous suffering and facing enormous challenges," Jan Egeland, UN co-ordinator of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said. "We're talking about millions affected by this."

He said Pakistan had deployed its own substantial fleet of helicopters to search for survivors but the scale of the disaster required more choppers and small fixed-wing aircraft.

The US responded by offering eight military helicopters - mostly twin-rotor Chinooks based in neighbouring Afghanistan - and two C-130 aircraft loaded with tents, blankets and other relief supplies.

The earthquake struck Saturday morning as schools were beginning classes, and hundreds if not thousands of children are feared to have died when buildings collapsed or were engulfed by landslides.

Officials said the hospitals in Muzaffarabad had been hard hit, and the Pakistani military flew in special teams of surgeons and set up field hospitals in the town.

"It's not only rescue work that is being affected, we have to start relief efforts as well. There's a huge need for field hospitals, water, sanitation and for food," Gerhard Putman-Cramer, head of the UN's Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, told AFP in Islamabad.

The earthquake also hit the Indian-held zone of Kashmir hard, with officials there saying more than 600 people were confirmed dead. They also warned many remote villages had yet to be reached and the death toll would likely rise.

The epicentre was close to the dividing line between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled zones of Kashmir, and scores of soldiers on both sides died when their heavily-fortified positions collapsed around them.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, but a peace process is under way and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reached out to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to offer help.

Offers of aid and assistance have begun pouring in from around the world.

The World Bank offered $US20 million, while the Asian Development Bank pledged $US10 million in immediate aid and assistance.

Japan said it had sent a 50-strong emergency relief team and Britain, which has a large South Asian community, said it was sending an initial 100,000 pounds and a 60-strong rescue and relief team.

Australia Monday also pledged $5.5 million, up from an initial $500,000 emergency relief promised at the weekend.

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