Nearly 20,000 dead in South Asian quake

PAKISTAN on Sunday said nearly 20,000 people died in an earthquake it called the biggest tragedy in its history, as the devastated nation reached out for help from around the world.

More than 42,000 others were injured in Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake that unleashed its worst fury on Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, wiping entire towns off the map and burying victims in tombs of mud and rubble.

"It is such a horrendous situation that one cannot imagine," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told a news conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. "Casualties are increasing by the hour."

As national and international rescue teams raced against time to find survivors and cope with the injured, Sherpao said at least 19,136 people were already confirmed dead and 42,397 had been hurt.

President Pervez Musharraf appealed urgently for money and helicopters to get aid to the worst affected zones - the rugged terrain of the North West Frontier Province and the towering Himalayan mountains of Kashmir.

"We do seek international assistance," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

"There is a need for large supplies of medicines, tents and cargo helicopters to reach out to the people in far-flung and cut-off areas. The bigger these 'copters, the better."

Musharraf's chief spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, said the death toll could continue to soar as an official in Pakistani-held Kashmir said the eventual toll in that region could top 30,000.

"It is the biggest-ever disaster in the history of Pakistan," Sultan told AFP.

In the Indian sector of Kashmir, an official said more than 600 people had been killed there and that the number was likely to rise, pushing the total confirmed death toll close to 20,000.

The United Nations said the relief needs were massive and warned that, with many roads blocked by landslides, aid and rescue teams had difficulties reaching the worst affected areas.

"The requirements that we are gradually being made aware of are awesome - in terms of shelter, in terms of water sanitation, in terms of health," Gerhard Putnam-Cramer said in an interview with CNN.

"There's a huge need for field hospitals and also of course for food. But the roads, as you may know, have been broken in a variety of places," he said. "They're under repair but that may take a number of days."

Sherpao, Pakistan's interior minister, said around 11,000 of his country's dead were in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistan-controlled sector of Kashmir.

"There are cities, there are towns which have been completely destroyed," said the local minister for works and communication, Tariq Farooq. "Muzaffarabad is devastated."

The earthquake struck Saturday morning as schools were beginning classes, and hundreds if not thousands of children are feared to have died when buildings collapsed or were engulfed by landslides.

(AFP)