Pakistan quake toll rises to 24, blocked roads hamper relief efforts

ISLAMABAD (AFP) Feb 16, 2004
The death toll from an earthquake that hit northern Pakistan over the weekend has risen to 24 as authorities struggled to clear blocked roads to carry out relief efforts, state media reported Monday.

Goods, including tents, food and medicines, were rushed to the disaster area, but snowfall and landslides have blocked the roads, an official said.

"Snowfall has aggravated the miseries of quake-hit people as relief goods cannot reach them," said Syed Junaid Qasim, mayor of Bala Kot, some 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Islamabad.

"Blocked and damaged roads are hammering the relief operation," he said.

The quake, measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale, struck at 1030 GMT Saturday and was followed by an aftershock measuring 5.5. The epicenter was 200 kilometers (125 miles) northeast of Peshawar, capital of the province bordering Afghanistan, seismologists said.

Local residents spent the night under open skies in extremely cold weather as the powerful earthquake damaged hundreds of buildings, witnesses said.

Witnesses told an AFP photographer on Sunday that 13 bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of a passenger van caught in a landslide in the northern town of Batgram, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Islamabad.

The van crashed into a ravine after being struck by a falling boulder in Batgram.

The rest of the quake victims were killed by collapsing buildings. Cracks have appeared in hundreds of structures and roads have also been damaged officials said.

The provincial government has declared an emergency at hospitals of the Hazara area, an official statement said.

"Four children have died, 23 people were injured and 256 homes have been damaged in Mansehra division," district administrator Hussain Zada Khan said.

"There is no shortage of medicine and all injured have been given medical treatment," Khan said.

He said wheat flour is being provided to affected people and tents were being transported to area.

President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali have directed authorities to carry out emergency relief activities, a national television report said.

The tremors also shook the capital Islamabad, sending families fleeing from their houses.

"The tremors were felt in several cities of the northern regions and also in Islamabad and parts of (Pakistan-controlled) Kashmir," Chaudhry Qamar-uz Zaman, director general of the Meteorological office in Islamabad, told AFP.

TERRA.WIRE