10 October 2005

Rescue teams and volunteers have been frantically searching for survivors of the massive earthquake that hit parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan on Saturday.

With the death toll climbing over 30,000, local volunteer groups are labouring with excavators or bare hands to shift rubble under which victims lay buried. In the small town of Garhi Habibullah, 20 miles west of Muzaffarabad, a team of local volunteers - teachers, mullahs, traders and medical workers - scrambled to find survivors, clambering over roofs and peeling back its corrugated metal shell. They saved 95 lives.

Relief workers and volunteers have yet to reach many remote villages, and officials said the number of dead was likely to climb far above 19,400 already known to have died in Pakistan. In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the site of the quake’s epicentre, 11,000 are officially reported to be dead.

Pakistani officials believe that most victims are children. “It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas. The maximum affected were schoolchildren," Maj-Gen Sultan said. "Rescuers are pulling out dead children in Muzaffarabad but there is no one to claim the bodies which shows their parents are dead.”

The international community has responded to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s plea for medical supplies, tents, cargo helicopters and financial aid. “It is the biggest tragedy in the history of our nation,” he said on Sunday. The United Nations (UN) estimated that more than 2.5 million people needed shelter.

The UN has dispatched a Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team from the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva. The team, comprising initially of seven members, will assist and compliment the local emergency management authorities in the on-site assessment and relief coordination activities following the earthquake.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) sent 17 surgical teams while the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and OCHA pledged an initial $100,000 each for relief and coordination efforts.

Other humanitarian organizations are also mobilizing international volunteers to assist local organizations in delivering relief and medical services. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on Monday released some 10.8 million Swiss francs and is mobilizing an international volunteers’ team to assist the Pakistan Red Crescent in its rescue and medical operations.

The Malaysian Red Crescent said that it was sending a relief team to Pakistan, which will be joined by the Red Cross and Red Crescent workers from other Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Oxfam’s Shaista Aziz said the organization was gearing up to supply emergency aid to some 300,000 people in the worst affected areas.

Some teams had already reached Pakistan on Sunday, including two British emergency rescue teams and a UN team of top disaster coordination officials, who set up three emergency centres to coordinate relief efforts.

A Spanish group, United Fire fighters without Frontiers, said its rescue team had arrived in Islamabad with two large field hospitals and two tonnes of emergency equipment.

The Swedish Rescue Services Agency was sending tents and blankets. Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency said that the Emergency Ministry was sending 30 rescue workers and four dogs as well as a plane with blankets, bedding and tents.

A 25-member team of French engineers arrived on Sunday, while Berlin said that it had made 50,000 euros available to Pakistani authorities through its embassy in Islamabad.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake was felt as far as Afghanistan’s capital Kabul and the Indian capital New Delhi, but the main areas affected have been Kashmir and Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. It is believed to have been the strongest earthquake the region has seen in a century.

To donate, see related links:
Unicef
World Food Programme
Oxfam
International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies

Sources: BBC News, IFRC, IRIN News, Reuters, AFP, Oxfam, The Guardian