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.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS