A whole generation has been wiped out in the areas most devastated by the weekend’s huge quake, the military spokesman said on Monday, adding that schoolchildren were the worst affected.
"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas. The maximum number affected was schoolchildren," Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP. "Rescuers are pulling out dead children in Muzaffarabad but there is no one to claim the bodies which shows their parents are dead," Sultan said.
"Rawalakot has been destroyed. Muzaffarabad is 70 per cent destroyed. There is not a single house in Muzaffarabad which has not suffered damage. There is not a single family there that has not suffered," he added.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and a senior government official speaking on condition of anonymity said Monday that between 30,000 and 40,000 people had died. Sultan said the toll was 20,000 but likely to increase.
Foreign rescue teams were setting up field hospitals to cope with the tide of tens of thousands of people who were injured by the quake, Sultan added. "The Spanish rescue team with a field hospital is being placed in Bagh, the French Rescue team along with a field hospital is being placed in Rawlakot," he said.
Aid teams from Britain and Turkey were headed to Muzaffarabad while teams from Japan, China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates will be sent to Balakot, Battagram and other parts of Mansehra, he said. "We are likely to have most of them placed in the affected areas by the end of the day to maximise our relief efforts," he said. "The road network to these areas is being repaired, it has either been repaired or in the process."
Witnesses and correspondents say schools collapsed in almost every town and village across devastated northwestern areas and AJK. Many hundreds were trapped in the wreckage because the quake struck at the beginning of the school day and parents have been desperately digging at the rubble in the increasingly vain hope of getting them out.
In Balakot, a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl were pulled alive from the rubble of their school two days after the quake struck, an AFP photographer said. Volunteers and relatives of hundreds of parents at the Shaheen Public School helped to get the two children out of the debris and people recited verses from the holy Qur’aan and cried Allah-o-Akbar (God is great).
Meanwhile, the authorities have reopened the only roads leading to quake-hit Muzaffarabad and Balakot and relief trucks and rescue equipment are nearing both towns, Shaukat Sultan said. "This will tremendously help the relief effort," he said.
The roads were shut by landslides set off by Saturday’s tremor and desperate residents in the area have received little or no aid more than 48 hours after the disaster. Sultan said authorities had reopened the two roads that lead to Muzaffarabad, one going through the hill town of Murree and another through Garhi Habibullah.
The road linking the northwestern city of Mansehra to Balakot is also open, although a key bridge over the Kunar river that dividing Balakot remains unsafe, he added. "We are in a position to move the relief and heavy equipment to clear debris," he added. "Army trucks carrying relief goods are reaching that area now to Muzaffarabad and Balakot."
The DG ISPR said that rescue, relief activities in the earthquake hit areas will gain full momentum by this evening. Rescue teams would be able to reach everywhere and everyone at least by this evening, he told CNN. The enormity of the earthquake was so much and the area affected was so massive that it was difficult to reach everyone within first 24-36 hours, he said.
Responding to a question he said the foreign teams are bringing right kind of relief to the affected areas. Responding to another question he said Pakistan Army has lost over 300 soldiers and over 500 are injured in the affected areas.
Shaukat Sultan said, the first priority of the rescue operators is to find the people still alive and rescue them. Shifting of the injured to safe areas for appropriate treatment is the second priority, he said, adding the third being to ensure that relief reaches to right people.
He said provision of temporary accommodation facilities, drinking water, food, medicines, blankets are the other areas on which the relief activities are focusing. He said that all-out efforts are being made to restore the damaged roads infrastructure in the areas to expedite the relief activities.
In a major rescue operation on Monday about 40 students were recovered alive from boys and girls schools of Balakot. Eyewitnesses said the fortunate students passed 48 hours under the debris of the collapsed school buildings. The rescued students included nine girls.
Hundreds of thousands of quake survivors in the mountains of northeast Pakistan were desperately waiting for help after spending a second night in freezing temperatures. In many villages and towns people dug through the night with their bare hands in an often futile attempt to reach friends and relatives trapped in the rubble.
The United Nations said more helicopters were needed urgently to bring rescue equipment and vital aid to stricken villages high in the Himalayas where roads had been destroyed by landslides. "We are seeing enormous suffering and facing enormous challenges," Jan Egeland, UN coordinator of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, told AFP. "We’re talking about millions affected by this."
In Azad Kashmir, the minister for works and communication, Tariq Farooq said: "Muzaffarabad is devastated." "It’s not only rescue work that is being affected, we have to start relief efforts as well. There’s a huge need for field hospitals, water, sanitation and for food," Gerhard Putman-Cramer, head of the UN’s Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, told AFP in Islamabad.
As many as 33 more dead bodies were recovered from rubbles in calamity-hit Northern Areas. The injured were rushed to combined military hospitals and military hospital Rawalpindi.
As many as 350 troops of the Army were sent to the affected areas to carry out evacuation services and a team of 70 Pakistan army doctors was also placed in the area to provide medical treatment. Foreign tourists who were struck up in the vicinity of Balakot have been evacuated to Rawalpindi by army helicopter and these foreigners include one USA, one UK, three Chinese and two French citizens. Deputy Commissioner Diamer Adam Shah told APP on Monday that six people were reportedly killed in Dassu area adjacent to Diamer village of Astore district and five persons were killed in Somer Nalla area following the earthquake adding that fifteen injured were admitted to Chilas Headquarters Hospital for treatment.
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