Villagers recount quake horror in the mountains

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Friday (AFP) - Villages wiped off the map, bodies rotting, survivors walking hours for water - earthquake victims fleeing Kashmir's still inaccessible mountains recount the same apocalyptic tales.

As villagers trudge into Pakistani Kashmir's ravaged capital Muzaffarabad or are flown in by helicopter, they recount stories of entire towns razed and out of reach of food and medicine.

Petehka, 15 kilometers (nine miles) south of Muzaffarabad, used to be the village where people from the surrounding hills would come in to work, shop and go to school.

"There were 100 houses and they were all demolished. Not one is left," said Gulzman, an 80-year-old who served on the local council.

"The schools crumbled down on 3,000 schoolchildren and 1,000 high schoolers. None of them could escape," he said. Left to fend for themselves, survivors picked through the rubble with their bare hands and pulled out 40 people still alive under the bricks.

But they also found 1,500 bodies, Gulzman said. "The stench is unbearable. There are also a lot of animals' bodies decomposing," he said.

A similar tragedy unfolded in Seabur, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Muzaffarabad.

"Only those who were outside survived," said Mir Arif, a 30-year-old civil servant. Some 500 houses were flattened and 150 people were killed, with more than half of them still buried, he said.

"The village is up high. There isn't any shelter. People are living in the fields and sleeping on the ground under the open sky even though it's so cold. They can't feed themselves. They're eating raw corn from the fields," he said.

"To drink they gather water when it rains with broken utensils or plastic bags. There are already seven cases of diarrhea and cholera," he said.

Ashiq Hussain, a 50-year-old teacher, said there was also a desperate struggle for life in his village of Balgran, 45 kilometers (30 miles) south of Muzaffarabad, where some 300 bodies were found under the rubble.

"There aren't any shelters or blankets. The women and children cry at night. They cry every day. If we don't get tents and supplies, the entire village is going to die of hunger and cold," he said.

Half of Dhanni village high in the mountains fell in or across the Neelam river. Other buildings crumbled within seconds. Some 900 people could have died in the village, with 225 bodies recovered, residents who escaped said.