| South Asia earthquake kills at least 30,000(Agencies)
 Updated: 2005-10-10 05:57
 
 
 BALAKOT, Pakistan: Villagers dug with bare hands into collapsed schools and 
homes yesterday in a desperate search for survivors of a huge earthquake that 
has killed 30,000 in South Asia, with Pakistan calling it the country's 
worst-ever disaster and appealing for urgent help. 
 
 
 
 
 |  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. [AP]
 |  The vast majority of the deaths from Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake were in 
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, though several hundred were also reported in 
India-controlled Kashmir. 
 "I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died 
in Kashmir," said Tariq Mahmmod, the communications minister in 
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. 
 Dozens of villages were flattened in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, killing 
farmers, soldiers and schoolchildren, and triggering landslides that blocked 
rescuers from many devastated areas. 
 Two survivors were pulled from a destroyed apartment building in Pakistan's 
capital. 
 
 
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