Quake leaves 200 dead in Pakistan, 15,000 homeless

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(Agencies/Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-29 20:19

ISLAMABAD -- The powerful earthquake occurred on Wednesday in southwestern Pakistan has killed more than 200 people and caused scores of injures, local television reported on Thursday.

The death toll is expected to rise as many bodies may be buried under rubbles when the calamity leveled about 2,000 mud-walled houses in northern part of Balochistan province on Wednesday.

Earthquake victims dig through rubble after an earthquake in Ziarat, Baluchistan province, in this video grab taken October 29, 2008. More than 200 people were killed when a powerful earthquake struck southwest Pakistan on Wednesday bringing down hundreds of mud-walled houses, and the death toll was expected to rise, government officials said. [Agencies]

The epicenter of earthquake measuring 6.5 on Richter scale was in the scenic tourist spot Ziarat district, about 60 km north of Balochistan's capital Quetta.

The earthquake also left 15,000 homeless.

Ziarat and Pishin districts were the worst-hit areas, said National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Farooq Ahmed Khan at a press conference on Wednesday evening.

The government was undertaking the needed rescue efforts, and mobilizing essential goods, including tents, blankets, medicines and warm clothes to the affected area, said Farooq.

Two C-130 planes had already delivered relief goods and more assistance was on way, and the Pakistan army had sent 300 paramilitary forces to Ziarat and 100 to Pishin.

Local television showed that the local people, wrapped up with blankets, spent chilly night amid ensuing aftershocks.

As many as 20 aftershocks, with the biggest of 6.2 magnitude, had been recorded after the major earthquake and the meteorological departments warned that more aftershocks were expected in a week.

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Wednesday sent a message of sympathy to his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, saying he was shocked upon hearing the news of the earthquake and felt pain over the great casualties and property loss in Pakistan.

The Chinese people are very sympathetic to the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan as they themselves are still recovering from a magnitude-8 quake that rocked China's Sichuan province in May, Hu said.

The Chinese president extended his condolences to the victims and expressed the belief that the Pakistani people will overcome the difficulties and rebuild their homeland.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also sent sympathy messages to their Pakistani counterparts on the same day.

People bring a man injured by Wednesday's earthquake, at a local hospital in Quetta, Pakistan on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008.[Agencies]

"There is great destruction. Not a single house is intact," Dilawar Kakar, Mayor of Ziarat, told Express News television.

"I would like to appeal to the whole world for help. We need food, we need medicine. People need warm clothes, blankets because it is cold here," Kakar said.

In the village of Sohi, a reporter for AP Television News saw the bodies of 17 people killed in one collapsed house and 12 from another. Distraught residents were digging a mass grave in which to bury them.

"We can't dig separate graves for each of them, as the number of deaths is high and still people are searching in the rubble" of many other homes, said Shamsullah Khan, a village elder.

Other survivors sat stunned in the open, with little more than the clothes in which they had been sleeping.

Hospitals in the nearby town of Kawas and the provincial capital Quetta were flooded with the dead and injured.

One patient in Quetta Civil Hospital, Raz Mohammed, said he was awoken by the sound of his children crying before he felt a jolt.

"I rushed toward them but the roof of my own room collapsed and the main iron support hit me," he said. "That thing broke my back and I am in severe pain but thank God my children and relatives are safe."

With some roads blocked by landslides, officials said the army was ferrying hundreds of troops and medical teams on four helicopters to villages in the quake zone and had set up a field hospital in Quetta.

The quake struck two hours before dawn, the US Geological Survey reported. It was a shallow 10 miles below the surface and was centered about 400 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad.

Pakistan is prone to violent seismic upheavals. Wednesday's quake was the deadliest since a magnitude-7.6 quake devastated Kashmir and northern Pakistan in October 2005, killing about 80,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Officials said the area hit on Wednesday was much less densely populated.

Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist movement, but is not considered a major battleground in the fight against Taliban insurgents that plague other border regions.

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