Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Pakistan

Death toll in Pakistan's NWFP region passes 12,000

Islamabad (dpa) - The quake-hit Northwestern-Frontier Province (NWFP) government Friday confirmed more than 12,000 deaths in the region.

NWFP information minister, Asif Iqbal Daudzai, feared the number of causalities in the province would further rise as nearly 500 villages in five badly affected districts of the province remained inaccessible due to severed road links.

"The situation is getting worse day by day in our province and the locals have begun carrying out collective burials,'' Daudzai told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Army spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan had Thursday put the total figure at 25,000 including roughly 4,000 fatalities from NWFP from the October 8 earthquake, saying the exact toll could be ascertained only after access to remote villages in Kashmir and the NWFP.

However, the unofficial number of fatalities is being put at about 40,000.

Daudzai said the 7.6 magnitude earthquake also injured some 21,000 people mostly children and women in NWFP and destroyed about 45 per cent of private buildings in Mansehra, Battagram, Shangla, Abbottabad and Koshistan.

Rescue and relief operations for the quake-hit areas had intensified and in some regions that were inaccessible by road, food, tents and blankets were being dropped from helicopters.

Those injured and left homeless, especially in the hardiest-hit area of Balakot in NWFP, some 150 kilometres north of Islamabad, were complaining about the non-availability of relief goods as no rescue teams from the government had reached there.

However, officials Thursday said army helicopters alone delivered some 43 tons of medicines, 17,078 tons of rations, 26,489 blankets, 7,000 tents, and 54 tons of clean drinking water to quake affected areas in northern Pakistan and the Kashmir region since last Saturday.

Some 42 countries as well as the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have already committed more than 400 million dollars in aid.

As many as 150 international relief flights have so far arrived with thousands of tons of relief goods, an official in the prime minister's control room told dpa.

About 1,800 rescue experts, volunteers and engineers from different countries, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, Russia, France, Japan, Switzerland, Spain and Iran are already in the affected areas to help people trapped under rubble and to conduct other relief operations. dpa kh me

Disclaimer

Deutsche Presse Agentur
Copyright (c) dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH