• Come and join our girl community by registering for free and start discussing about girl topics, fashion, relationships...

Hope Of Finding Survivors Fades In Asia Quake Zone

Snowbaby

Active Member
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
Messages
9,704
Location
Scotland
Hope was dwindling on Tuesday of finding survivors among the thousands buried under houses, offices and schools in northern Pakistan and Indian Kashmir, devastated by a killer earthquake three days ago.

As the scale of the humanitarian crisis dawned on Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf's government sought more international support for a disaster that officials in the worst-hit areas say may have claimed up to 40,000 lives.

The United States has pledged an initial $50 million for emergency aid. Several transport aircraft have been sent with relief supplies, heavy equipment and a humanitarian coordination team and further flights were due to arrive on Tuesday.

European nations, Japan and Gulf Arab states also stepped forward with similar offers of support.

The official death toll remained at 21,000, although officials in Pakistan's part of Kashmir and North West Frontier Province, areas that bore the brunt of Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake, suggested it could be almost twice as high.

Another 2,000 may have died in neighbouring India, and the fate of about 10,000 people living in remote villages on the border with Pakistan was unknown, Indian officials said.

Rescuers, many of them desperate relatives scrabbling with their bare hands, battled on in the hope that they could save thousands of people trapped in rubble.

Medical experts say an unhurt man can last for three days without water and a woman four days, which means time is running out -- although in such catastrophes there are often stories of miraculous survival.

"We are still looking for bodies in the debris," said A.M. Khandy, deputy commissioner in the Indian Kashmir district of Karnah. "It is a calamity that is overwhelming our resources."

Aerial pictures of stricken areas showed whole villages and towns flattened, as Musharraf asked for more helicopters that could reach communities cut off in the region's rugged mountains.

Source
 
Werbung:
Back
Top