Quake toll could reach 40 000
2005-10-10 14:23
Islamabad - Between 30 000 and 40 000 people died in a massive earthquake that hit Pakistan at the weekend, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) and a senior government official said on Monday.
"We have been told by the government that 30 000 to 40 000 died," in the quake on Saturday, said Unicef spokesperson Julia Spry-Leverton in the capital Islamabad.
Spry-Leverton said children were especially vulnerable and accounted for around 50% of those in the affected areas in northern Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
Around five million people live in the worst-hit region, she said, where the earthquake destroyed many schools. Witnesses have reported hundreds of children being trapped in the wreckage of schools across the region.
Death toll expected to rise
"Between 30 000 to 40 000 people have died in Pakistan and 60 000 plus are injured," a senior government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It's a very bad situation. We are getting reports of casualties from all the affected areas, even now at this very moment," the official added.
The official Pakistani government toll is around 20 000 with 43 000 injured, said chief military spokesperson major general Shaukat Sultan on Monday.
"But we expect the toll to rise," Sultan added.
Spry-Leverton said rescuers were struggling against the a lack of equipment and medicines to give care for survivors, she said.
In badly-hit Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, the main hospital collapsed killing 1 000 people, she added.
Rescue operations under way
Unicef had sent two teams to the northwestern town of Mansehra and to Muzaffarabad including sanitation and nutrition experts, she said.
"They are getting out there now so we are getting some idea of children's vulnerability, we can get some idea of how we can intervene most effectively," she said.
A third team was headed for the Northern Areas near the Chinese border but the road had been blocked by a landslide and "they are talking in terms of weeks to clear it".
Unicef warned on Sunday that lost and orphaned children were among the most vulnerable survivors of the earthquake in South Asia and would need urgent help to survive in the cold and mountainous areas.
They would need assistance to find surviving relatives and eventually to overcome the trauma of the disaster, David Bull, executive director of the UN's Children Fund in Britain, told the BBC World Service.
"We know that children in an earthquake situation are vulnerable to injury, cold, hunger, distress, illness, exploitation and the loss of their active education, separation from their families," he said.