ISLAMABAD, 11 October 2005 — Hundreds of thousands of people, left hungry and homeless by the deadly earthquake, lost patience over the crawling speed of the relief effort, leading to looting in various parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir yesterday.
More than 48 hours after the 7.6-magnitude quake wiped away entire villages and buried victims under piles of debris, the full scope of the devastation — and the enormous cost in human lives — began to emerge. “It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas,” Pakistani Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told reporters.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah yesterday telephoned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to convey his condolences over the death and destruction caused by the earthquake. Musharraf thanked the king for the humanitarian gesture.
In a related development, the Jeddah-based International Islamic Relief Organization said it had allocated SR1 million for relief supplies to the quake victims.
A senior official said the quake had killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people in the mountains of northeast Pakistan, and injured another 60,000.
The quake centered its fury in northern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a mountainous region where untold numbers of children were entombed when schools and houses collapsed under the worst quake to hit Pakistan in decades.
Four children, including a six-year-old boy Nawasib and a four-year-old girl, were rescued from the debris of their schools in Balakot in the North Western Province early yesterday. The huge international rescue effort that has swept into Pakistan has been severely hampered by the treacherous terrain and huge quake-triggered landslides that wiped out many roads, even though some reopened yesterday.
“We are not mourning our dead today, we are mourning our ties with the government,” said magistrate Raja Mohammad Irshad, in the remote town of Bagh, who lost a sister-in-law, three nephews and two cousins.
“We are asking whether they think we are human beings or animals, or non-living things,” he said.
In Muzaffarabad, people ransacked military trucks that had just arrived and took food, tents, blankets and medicines. Police opened fire in the air to scare away looters.
One group broke into a petrol station to get fuel to burn wood for cooking and warmth, while others snatched government cars and jeeps. “People are starving. They have lost all their family members, their belongings,” local resident Akram Shah told AFP. “Everything is gone, people are buried alive. Nobody is helping us to find them.”
Offers of aid continued to pour in from around the world. Kuwait and UAE pledged $100 million each while the United States said it had provided $50 million. The World Bank offered $20 million and the Asian Development Bank pledged $10 million.
Indian officials said more than 950 people had been killed in the Indian-controlled Kashmir. India’s military has taken the lead in the relief work on the Indian side.
— With input from agencies
