230 perish as quake hits Pakistan, death toll expected to rise

AWARAN

Pakistani rescuers Tuesday strived to reach victims of a huge earthquake that killed more than 230 people.

The quake toppled thousands of mud-built homes when it hit the country’s southwest with enough force to create a new island off the coast.

The 7.7-magnitude quake struck on Tuesday afternoon in Baluchistan province’s Awaran district.

Officials said 238 deaths had been confirmed, 208 in Awaran district, and the toll is expected to rise as rescue teams reach more villages in the remote area, which has been shaken by more than a dozen aftershocks.

“A total of six districts — Awaran, Kech, Gwadar, Panjgur, Chaghi and Khuzdar — and a population of over 300,000 have been affected by the earthquake,” Jan Muhammad Buledi, spokesman for the Baluchistan government, told AFP.

30 DIE IN HOSPITAL

The head of the provincial disaster management agency, Mr Abdul Latif Kakar, told AFP that 30 people had died in Kech district, a toll confirmed by a senior local official.

Buledi said teams were working to recover bodies, but the priority was to move the injured to hospitals as soon as possible — a difficult task in a desolate area with minimal infrastructure.
“We are seriously lacking medical facilities and there is no space to treat injured people in the local hospitals,” he said.

“We are trying to shift seriously injured people to Karachi through helicopters and others to the neighbouring districts.”

Karachi’s Aga Khan Hospital said they were preparing to receive injured, but none had arrived by midday.

ARMY JOINS RESCUE EFFORTS

The army has sent 100 medical staff and 1,000 troops to the area to help with rescue efforts and has established a medical centre in one of the worst-affected villages, Tarteej.

The navy has sent a ship carrying relief supplies to Gwadar port, close to the Iranian border, and aircraft to ferry injured to Karachi and Ormara, a naval base in Baluchistan.

The scale of the territory involved is daunting. Awaran’s population is scattered over an area of more than 21,000 square kilometres (8,000 square miles).

Baluchistan makes up around 45 per cent of Pakistan’s area but is the country’s least populated and least developed province. On top of the difficult terrain, the area is rife with separatist and Islamist militants as well as bandits.

HUGE POPULATION

More than 60,000 people live within 50 kilometres of the epicentre, according to the UN disaster agency, mostly in easily collapsible mud homes.

Abdul Rasheed Baluch, a senior official in Awaran, said teams had worked through the night to try to retrieve bodies and survivors from the rubble.

“Around 90 per cent of houses in the district have been destroyed. Almost all the mud houses have collapsed,” he said.

Tremors were felt on Tuesday as far away as New Delhi and even Dubai in the Gulf, while people in the Indian city of Ahmedabad near the border with Pakistan ran into the streets in panic.

Pakistani residents walk on the debris of a house that collapsed after an earthquake hit Awaran district in Baluchistan province yesterday.