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Asian quake death toll at least 20,000
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-09 21:30
Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare
hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been
heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake. Pakistani officials
said the death toll ranged between nearly 20,000 and 30,000.
Pakistani rescue workers remove a dead body
from rubble of 10-story apartment building that collapsed in the 7.6
magnitude earthquake a day earlier, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 in Islamabad,
Pakistan. The death toll from a huge earthquake that struck Pakistan,
India and Afghanistan rose above 20,000 on Sunday, the Pakistani army
spokesman said, as rescuers struggled to dig victims from destroyed
apartment buildings, schools and mud-brick homes.
[AP] |
Pakistan called Saturday's magnitude-7.6 earthquake the country's worst on
record, and the president appealed for urgent help. Rival India, which reported
more than 465 dead, offered assistance.
"I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died
in Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region,
told The Associated Press.
In mountainous Kashmir, the quake flattened dozens of
villages and towns, crushing schools and mud-brick houses. The dead included 250
girls at a school razed to the ground and more than 200 Pakistani soldiers on
duty in the Himalayas.
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