|
'Parents treat kids with opium'
23/02/2005 12:57 - (SA)
New Delhi - A wave of avalanches that flattened villages in Indian Kashmir, torrential rain and snow in Pakistan and icy temperatures in Afganistan pushed the death toll on Wednesday from an extreme cold snap gripping South Asia to over 1 000.
In Indian Kashmir, army and civilian rescuers braved sub-zero cold and harsh Himalayan winds to search for survivors of avalanches and landslides that have claimed 229 lives since Saturday, police said.
"Some bodies have been buried, some are inside a mosque and others scattered on the snow. The entire village is devastated," rescuer Ghulam Mohammed Wagay said in Watlingo village, one of a string of communities crushed by snowslides.
In Afghanistan, poverty-stricken parents were feeding opium to their children to help them endure numbing temperatures, hunger and disease that have killed at least 267 people, 128 of them youngsters, authorities said.
"Some parents don't go to doctors and administer opium to the kids to stop the cough, and that stops the cough but can also kill them," said Health Minister Amin Fatimie.
Death toll could rise
But the death toll from the deep chill could be far higher than figures given by the government, which is struggling to cope with the worst winter in a decade.
One humanitarian group, Catholic Relief Services, said up to 1 000 children could have been killed by freezing weather in western Ghor province alone, although officials rejected the figure.
Members of the aid organisation struggled through heavy snow to 16 villages in a remote district of the province and found 80 children had died in those villages alone in the last month, most in the past two weeks. In Pakistan, heavy snowfall and lashing rains have killed at least 533 people at both ends of the country in the past three weeks, federal government relief center spokesman Mashal Khan said.
Troops have airlifted to safety those most in peril and dropped supplies to others. The worst hit area was North West Frontier Province where at least 335 have died. Another 42 died in the lawless Tribal Areas.
Floods are believed to have claimed 85 lives in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, many when the Shadi Kor dam near the coast burst February 10 under pressure from rain and runoff from melting mountain snow.
A series of avalanches in Pakistan's zone of divided Kashmir killed 56, according to officials, and 15 in neighbouring northern areas.
In Indian-administered Kashmir where avalanches and landslides have killed a total of 254 people over the past two weeks, the army has appealed to people in mountainous areas to flee their homes.
It said it fears more avalanches once temperatures start to rise after six villages were crushed by snowslides since Saturday. Indian authorities were hesitant to estimate how many were still missing but civilian volunteers said they believed the number was over 300 in the region, blanketed by the heaviest snow in decades.
|
News
