http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9626146/

BALAKOT, Pakistan - 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 killed more than 20,000.

Pakistani officials said the toll could go higher, and a provincial official in Kashmir said more than 30,000 died in that province alone.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf called Saturday’s magnitude-7.7 earthquake the country’s worst on record and appealed for urgent help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides. Rival India, which reported more than 600 dead, offered assistance.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said American officials were determining what assistance could be provided.

The prime minister said the United States was sending between six and eight transport helicopters Monday.

In a brief news conference Sunday, President Bush pledged American assistance. “The United States of America wants to help,” Bush said from the White House. “We want to help in any way we can. We've started to send cash money and other equipment, goods, to help the good people of Pakistan.

“Pakistan is a friend and the United States government and the people of the United States will help the best we possibly can,” the president said.

The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of three nations, with the damage spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in northern Indian territory. In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed.

‘Worst disaster in Pakistan’s history’
“We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan’s history,” chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

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.


“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.

Officials said Balakot, a village of about 30,000, was one of the hardest-hit areas. At least 250 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of the four-story school, and at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets.

Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies. Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old business administration student, said he heard children under the rubble crying for help immediately after Saturday’s disaster.

“Now there’s no sign of life,” he said Sunday. “We can’t do this without the army’s help. Nobody has come here to help us.”

Rain hampers rescue work
Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. However, landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts, blocking roads.

There was no sign of government help in Balakot, in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles north of Islamabad. The quake leveled the main bazaar, crushing shoppers and strewing gas cylinders, bricks, tomatoes and onions on the streets.

Injured people covered by shawls lay in the street. Residents carried bodies on wooden planks. The corpses of four children, aged between 4 and 6, lay under a sheet of corrugated iron. Relatives said they were trying to find sheets to wrap the bodies.

“We don’t have anything to bury them with,” said a cousin, Saqib Swati.

Shop owner Mohammed Iqbal said two primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, also collapsed, and more than 500 students were feared dead.



Musharraf appeals for aid
Musharraf appealed to the international community for medicine, tents, cargo helicopters and financial assistance.

“We have enough manpower but we need financial support ... to cope with the tragedy,” Musharraf said in Rawalpindi before touring devastated areas.

Musharraf said he knew of as many as 20,000 people killed, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told CNN about 43,000 people were injured.

Musharraf told the British Broadcasting Corp. the only way to reach many far-flung areas was by helicopter because roads were impassable.
“Our helicopter resources are limited,” he told the BBC. “We need massive cargo helicopter support.”

In Afghanistan, Col. James Yonts, spokesman for the 21,000-strong U.S.-led coalition force, said Washington had not given instructions to help.

Maj. Andrew Elmes, spokesman for NATO’s 11,000-strong force, said it was outside the mission’s mandate to operate beyond Afghanistan.

Offers of international assistance poured in, and an eight-member U.N. team of disaster coordination officials arrived in Islamabad.

In the northwestern district of Mansehra, police chief Ataullah Khan Wazir said Saturday that authorities pulled 250 bodies from the rubble of a girls’ school in Ghari Habibibullah. Dozens of children were feared killed in other schools.

Mansehra was believed to be a hotbed of Islamic militant activity during the time the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Al-Qaida operatives trained suicide squads at a camp there, Afghan and Pakistani officials told The AP in 2002.

Deaths at line of control
At least 215 Pakistani soldiers died in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, Sultan said. On India’s side, at least 54 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

The most serious damage reported in Islamabad was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 24 people were killed and dozens were injured. Doctors said the dead included an Egyptian diplomat, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry said two Japanese were killed.

On Sunday, Pakistani rescue teams pulled a boy and a women from the rubble. The survivors told doctors others were trapped alive and calling for help.

“These people heard voices and cries during the whole night,” said Adil Inayat, a doctor at PIMS hospital in Islamabad.

Death toll in India tops 600
The death toll in India crossed 600 Sunday after rescue workers recovered 90 more bodies in the frontier Tangdar region, 65 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths were in the border towns Uri, Tangdar and Punch and Srinagar, where the quake collapsed houses and buildings.

Hundreds of angry villagers blocked roads in the region, protesting the slow pace of rescue efforts.


“Everything is destroyed — the ground shook and took everything down,” Syad Hassan said. “All the government people, the press people, they are just driving past.”

Most people in Jammu-Kashmir spent the cold night in the open, lighting fires with wood pulled from fallen houses.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of Islamabad, six miles below the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir. That was followed by at least 22 aftershocks within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.

Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing more damage.

India offered help and condolences. The nuclear rivals have been pursuing peace after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

Afghanistan appeared to suffer the least damage. In its east, an 11-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall in her home collapsed, police official Gafar Khan said. Three others also died.

The U.S. military said the quake was felt at Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, but no damages were reported at bases elsewhere.



RIP to all the dead

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In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is the king
- Nas

Wow. That's amazing the number of dead and missing.

Pres. Bush has already said we'd help in any way we can. And we've already sent cash money, equipment and other aid.

__________________
“I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” — Barack Obama, Speech to ACORN, November 2007

Does this report make no sense to anyone else?

Its been 5 weeks since Katrina and we still don't have an accurate death toll, yet within a couple days of this earthquake they somehow already know that 30,000 have been killed?

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"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984

...

i guess it makes sense.

U.S. doesn't want to shock people, so they don't count bodys they havn't processed yet.

Local Pakistani officials seem to want to shock people as much as possible so that they can get relief to their areas, so they make huge estimates.

__________________
"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984

thats a good point
i guess Musharif is waiting for more billions from US, after getting i forget how many billions to be "US friend" for Afghanistan affair...

You need a new avatar...

I havn't been on this board for several months, but it seems you have arrived here. umm... welcome?

...

I'm also not sure how cynical one would have to be to characterize a 7.7 magnitude earthquake as "i guess Musharif is waiting for more billions from US, after getting i forget how many billions to be "US friend" for Afghanistan affair... "

Or was there really an earthquake was it all just a zionist conspiracy??

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"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984

the earthquake was, but i do believe it if you scroll up, you were the one who brought up the good point of how the hell do they know how many people died so fast...

Yes, i can see now where i clearly stated that this is all a conspiracy by Musharif (SP? ) to leach billions off the U.S.

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"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984

I was simply making an observation by comparing the two disasters... I don't think that pakistani officials can be blamed in any way for estimating the casualties beforehand rather than going in and counting them by hand. And to the mods i appologize for apparently hijacking this thread :-/

...

This is a huge disaster... Don't think it could have come at a worse time, as the U.S. probably has its hands full with the hurricanes. I guess that leaves India to help clean up the mess... not sure how well that is going to fly.

__________________
"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984

__________________
"The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind--surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false" - 1984