'We have not lost hope'

2005-10-14 08:01

Muzaffarabad -

Islamabad - Pakistan's chief military spokesperson has insisted on Friday that the search for survivors caught beneath the rubble of last week's earthquake would continue, after officers in the disaster zone said it had been called off.

"We have not lost hope for survivors to be found. Relentless efforts continue to rescue the survivors and at the same time relief efforts are in full swing," Major General Shaukat Sultan said.

"No decision has been taken to discontinue the search for survivors."

Sultan was responding to comments by Major Farooq Nasir, the spokesman for the army's emergency relief operations in quake-hit Muzaffarabad, who said: "We have moved from search and rescue to search and recovery".

The 7.6-magnitude quake which struck Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on Saturday killed more than 25 000 people on this side of the divided region and made some 2.5 million people homeless, according to the military.

Death toll will rise

Hundreds, probably thousands, of bodies remain beneath the rubble, including hundreds of children who were buried alive at their desks when their schools collapsed around them.

Pakistani and United Nations officials have said the death toll is sure to rise significantly as the rubble is cleared.

Search and rescue teams rushed to Pakistan from around the world in the days after the quake, but by Thursday night most were packing up their equipment, knowing that the chances of survival after six days were almost nil.

Nasir said the heart-breaking decision to officially call off the rescue efforts came during a meeting overnight on Thursday between army officers and aid agencies in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

The co-ordinator of United Nations relief operations here, Alain Pasche, agreed there was virtually no hope of finding survivors but it was "up to the Pakistan government to declare the search and rescue phase is over".

A member of British team Search and Rescue Assistance in Disasters said they would go to the capital Islamabad in the hope of being redeployed to areas where there still could be people trapped alive under the rubble.

"We would have liked it if some of the teams could have been assigned a helicopter so they could have jumped from village to village in the remote areas," said Geoff Parkinson.

"We could have made a difference."

One of many international rescue teams here, it had already rescued a blind man from the rubble but lost a battle to extract a 20-year-old woman who was now believed dead.

- AFP