ISLAMABAD, 20 October 2005 — A strong aftershock jolted cities across northern Pakistan late yesterday, hours after two other tremors rattled survivors of the massive Oct. 8 quake.
The latest shock measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale was felt at 5:47 p.m.
The epicenter was near quake-hit Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, about 120 kilometers north of Islamabad. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Witnesses said some people in Islamabad rushed out of their homes after the latest tremor. Earlier yesterday, at 7.34 a.m., a 5.8 magnitude tremor lasting a few seconds shook the same area, and was followed less than an hour afterward by another aftershock measuring 5.4.
The military in Muzaffarabad warned that the aftershocks could cause buildings damaged by the original earthquake to collapse.
Pakistan yesterday raised the official death toll from this month’s quake to 47,700, a jump of more than 6,000 from the previous figure given on Monday. Around 3.3 million were made homeless in the disaster. However, a casualty survey by one of the two hardest-hit Pakistani regions pushed the toll to more than 79,000, making it one of the deadliest.
Regional authorities gave much higher figures, based on information filtering in from outlying areas and as more bodies were pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Aid workers fear casualties could rise even further as communities without adequate food, shelter or health care will soon face the harsh Himalayan winter. Snow has already begun to fall in high mountains, and some upland villages now face subzero temperatures at night.
However, the death toll in Pakistan is unlikely to come close to last December’s magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami that killed more than 176,000 people — most of them in Indonesia — or a magnitude 8.2 temblor that killed 240,000 in Tangshan, China in 1976.
President Pervez Musharraf, on a helicopter visit through the ruins, promised new, quake-ready houses to the homeless.
On a whistlestop tour near the quake-hit town of Balakot, President Musharraf promised to build quake-proof homes for the homeless — drawing applause from an audience of about 200 villagers at a tented settlement.
Carrying a swagger stick and wearing a baseball cap, the leader also said he would be willing to let Kashmiri civilians drive across the militarized border from India to help their brethren on the Pakistan side rebuild.
“If they want to assist in the reconstruction effort and in (distributing) relief goods, yes, I will allow it ... We would like to encourage it,” Musharraf said. In remote uplands, a steady flow of injured villagers continued to seek medical attention. Many had infected wounds, untreated since the temblor, and had to rely on relatives to carry them for hours on foot to makeshift clinics.
