A powerful earthquake struck southwest Pakistan before dawn yesterday, killing at least 160 people, destroying mud homes and sending survivors screaming into the streets in panic.
At least eight villages were badly hit by the 6.4-magnitude quake, local police and officials said, warning the death toll could rise as rescue workers reached villages in the remote mountainous region bordering Afghanistan.
“Around 160 people have died so far,” said Khushal Khan, spokesman for Zamarak Khan, the revenue minister of gas-rich Baluchistan Province.
“The toll may go up. The dead included 29 members of the same family,” he said.
Residents in the region around the historic hill town of Ziarat, about 50km north of Quetta, told him about 6,000 people have been made homeless, he said.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani both expressed their condolences to relatives of those killed and injured and called for a country-wide response.
The first official government figures from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) put the death toll at 115 so far, with nearly 300 injured, its chairman, retired lieutenant general Farooq Ahmed, told a news conference.
In Quetta, witnesses said people fled screaming from their homes. TV footage showed many outside in the streets, wrapped up against the early morning chill.
But most of the victims were from outlying villages, whose mud houses were destroyed by the tremors, which triggered landslides of rocks and boulders while people slept in their beds.
In the village of Wam, near Ziarat, survivors later began burying their dead in line with Islamic tradition. At least 75 bodies were removed from the rubble, a local charity, Edhi, said.
Others desperately dug among the rubble of demolished houses in the hope of finding loved ones alive or their bodies.
Mohammed Sultan, from the town of Sanjawai, said the first tremor shook him awake shortly before 5am, before he felt a larger shockwave about 10 minutes later.
In Ziarat buildings had collapsed and communications had been cut, he said, adding: “The town looks devastated. Parts of it are badly damaged. My relatives live in Ziarat, but I can’t contact them to find out how they are.”
The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at 5:09am. Its epicenter was located some 70km north of Quetta.
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