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/ 18 October 2005
Thousands of injured people languished without shelter and medical care on Tuesday in villages across the earthquake-stricken region of Kashmir and authorities warned that exposure and infections could drive the death toll up from 54 000 as the harsh Himalayan winter looms.
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/ 17 October 2005
Aid finally started reaching some of Pakistan’s thousands of cold and hungry earthquake survivors on Monday as helicopters, trucks and donkeys raced to reach Himalayan villages cut off for nine days. The leader of Pakistani Kashmir put the toll from South Asia’s disaster at more than 54 000.
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/ 17 October 2005
Heavy rains receded on Monday in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, giving hope that efforts could resume to bring aid to the millions of homeless survivors of a monster earthquake that killed an estimated 54Â 000 people. Two strong aftershocks struck the region in the early morning, including one with a magnitude of 4,5, but there was no immediate report of damage.
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/ 16 October 2005
Torrential downpours delayed quake relief efforts on Sunday in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, and the Pakistani military said one of its helicopters flying an aid mission crashed, killing all six people aboard. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz made it clear that shelter is now the priority.
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/ 15 October 2005
Pakistan said on Saturday the death toll from the region’s massive earthquake has reached 38 000 people, a jump of 13 000, with about 3,3-million people homeless ahead of the Himalayan winter. The October 8 earthquake also ravaged the Indian side of divided Kashmir, killing 1 329 people there.
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/ 14 October 2005
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, they recount stories of entire towns razed and out of reach of food and medicine.
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/ 14 October 2005
With vast parts of Pakistan still digging out from last week’s earthquake, donors are already planning a massive reconstruction effort that will require billions of dollars over five to 10 years, United Nations and British officials said on Friday. But so far, even the immediate needs have gone unmet for survivors of last Saturday’s earthquake.
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/ 13 October 2005
A strong aftershock shook Pakistan on Thursday, rattling the nerves of those who lived through last weekend’s devastating earthquake and bringing an even greater sense of urgency to efforts to find survivors under the precarious rubble. The death toll is believed to be more than 35 000.
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/ 12 October 2005
Relief teams raced food and supplies into earthquake-hit areas of northern Pakistan on Wednesday as desperate survivors readied for a fifth straight night of cold and hunger. A child, a mother-of-three and an elderly man came out of different areas of devastated Pakistani-held Kashmir alive after being buried by the quake.
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/ 11 October 2005
Huddling under bits of plastic, survivors in quake-hit Muzaffarabad faced fresh heartbreak on Tuesday as torrential rain halted aid efforts hours after they got into gear. Helicopters were forced to stop their mercy flights bringing aid to the Pakistani Kashmir capital and evacuating the worst of the injured from Saturday’s earthquake to hospitals in Islamabad.
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/ 10 October 2005
Aircraft rushed in supplies from abroad and Washington pledged -million in aid on Monday as hungry families displaced in Pakistan’s worst earthquake huddled in tents and shopkeepers clashed with looters. Death-toll estimates ranged from 20 000 to 40 000.
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/ 10 October 2005
Hundreds of thousands of quake survivors in the mountains of northeast Pakistan were on Monday desperately waiting for help after spending a second night in freezing temperatures, as the confirmed death toll rose to nearly 20 000. In many villages and towns hardest hit by Saturday’s quake, people dug through the night with their bare hands in an often futile attempt to reach friends and relatives trapped in the rubble.
Pakistani officials said on Sunday the death toll from Saturday’s massive earthquake ranges between 20 000 and 30 000. Meanwhile, in dozens of Pakistani villages, many cut off from rescuers by quake-induced landslides, relatives desperate to find their loved ones dug through rubble with their bare hands.
Pakistan’s interior ministry said on Sunday that more than 19 000 people died in the huge earthquake that shook parts of South Asia on Saturday, while India raised its toll to 583. Another Pakistani official said an estimated 30 000 people were killed in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir alone.
Rescue experts, medical teams, sniffer dogs and supplies were being mobilised on Sunday as a worldwide effort cranked into gear to bring aid to victims of a massive earthquake that struck South Asia. Japan, the United States and the European Union were among the first to offer manpower and financial aid to Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
Thousands of people were killed on Saturday when a massive earthquake measuring 7,6 on the Richter scale shook parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, flattening houses and sweeping whole villages away. The confirmed tally of deaths has been pushed above 3 000.
An earthquake measuring at least 7,6 on the Richter scale caused massive devastation on Saturday across a swathe of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, leaving more than 1Â 800 dead with fears for many more. The quake triggered deadly landslides that wiped out entire villages.
A massive earthquake is feared to have killed more than 1 000 people in Pakistan on Saturday, said chief military spokesperson Major General Shaukat Sultan. ”The death toll could be more than 1 000. There could be massive casualties but we do not have exact numbers,” Sultan said from the capital Islamabad.
Gunmen riding motorcycles opened fire on worshippers from a minority Muslim sect at a mosque in Pakistan Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding 12, a security official and police said. Three attackers sprayed the dawn prayer session marking the second day of Ramadan in Mong village, part of Mandi Bahauddin town, 100km south of the capital Islamabad.
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/ 1 September 2005
Pakistan plans to send a delegation to Israel following historic talks on Thursday between their foreign ministers, but it still does not recognise the Jewish state, President General Pervez Musharraf said. Musharraf said the talks held in Istanbul, Turkey, were ”the first formal contact between our two countries”.
Pakistani voters went to the polls on Thursday for local elections that are being seen as a test of President Pervez Musharraf’s fight against Islamic hard-liners and his commitment to women’s rights. Five people died and scores were injured in clashes between rival supporters in the first elections in Pakistan in almost three years.
Pakistan test-fired its first cruise missile on President Pervez Musharraf’s 62nd birthday on Thursday, in the latest escalation of the arms race with rival India. Delhi declined to comment on the launch of the Babur, a terrain-hugging missile with a range of almost 500km which can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads.
Struggling under an onslaught of Bollywood movies on black market DVDs, the owners of Pakistan’s empty cinema halls are imploring their government to lift a ban on India’s wildly popular masala flicks. Movie houses that once saw audiences queue for Pakistan’s home-grown ”Lollywood” productions now say they need to screen films made by their once bitter rivals in glitzy Mumbai.
President Pervez Musharraf’s declaration that he has ”completely shattered” al-Qaeda in Pakistan was met on Tuesday with deep scepticism from diplomats, analysts and opposition politicians. As the hunt for the network behind the London bombings intensifies, he bristled at suggestions that Pakistan was a global hub for al-Qaeda.
Egypt has told Pakistan that no Pakistani national was involved in the weekend’s deadly Red Sea resort bombings, Cairo’s embassy in Islamabad said on Tuesday. Cairo police had earlier said they were searching for several Pakistani nationals in relation to the bombings that killed scores of people at the weekend in the popular resort.
The road from the airport to the centre of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, should be a straightforward drive. Six lanes wide and well maintained, it has lights, even banks of flowers. But it is choked by a throng of black and yellow taxis, overloaded buses, lorries, scores of motorbikes and hundreds of bicycles. On a bank beside the road, spelled out in six-feet high letters: ‘Faith, discipline and unity’.
Security officials in Pakistan were on Thursday questioning a British man arrested on suspicion of playing a key role in the 7/7 bombings in which 56 people died. Haroon Rashid Aswat was carrying a belt packed with explosives, a British passport and a substantial amount of cash when he was seized,
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, on Wednesday confirmed 200 Islamic activists have been rounded up in a renewed crackdown on religious extremists, but denied any links with the London bombings. Pakistani security agencies on Tuesday raided various mosques and Islamic schools across the country.
Pakistan on Tuesday launched a series of sweeping arrests against Islamist militants across the country, in a move explicitly linked to the investigation of the 7/7 bomb attacks in London, officials said. Security officers detained at least 25 people in raids in several major cities including Faisalabad, Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan.
Relatives desperately sought news of their loved ones on Thursday as medical workers struggled to identify mangled corpses a day after about 150 people died in Pakistan’s worst train crash in 15 years. Stations across the country have been thronged with people frantically searching victim lists posted by the authorities.
The first thing many passengers heard was a huge bang that shocked them out of their sleep. They saw something right out of a nightmare. ”We saw several coaches skidded off the track and there were bodies lying scattered across the railway yard,” said one survivor of Pakistan’s rail disaster on Wednesday, which left up to 150 people dead.
Three passenger trains collided at a southern Pakistan station early on Wednesday, killing around 150 people and injuring 1 000 in the country’s worst rail disaster for a more than a decade, officials said. Police said the death toll could rise to 300 following the devastating pile-up near the remote town of Ghotki.