The death toll from an earthquake that struck Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday has jumped to 38, officials said on Wednesday, as families mourned relatives and rescue teams sent supplies to the area.
Officials said the extent of the casualties, who included young children, emerged a day after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck as authorities were able to reach towns and villages around the region outside main population centres. “We had dispatched survey teams in the entire area affected by the earthquake to collect details of the victims,” Muhammad Tayyab, divisional commissioner for Mirpur, one of the worst affected areas, said, adding that around 500 people had been injured.
Tuesday’s earthquake levelled homes and shops and split open roads in an area between Jhelum and Mirpur. “The situation is slowly returning to normal, the level of panic is now less among the people, although an aftershock was felt at night,” said Sardar Gulfaraz Khan, a police deputy inspector general. Most of the damage happened in villages where old houses collapsed, Khan said.
In a town in Mirpur district, more than 200 people gathered to attend the funeral of a 1-1/2-year-old child who was killed in the earthquake. Women wailed around the bed where the boy’s body lay covered in a blanket.
Another child in the town was buried the same morning after a wall collapsed on her. “All of sudden I received a call from my father that there was an earthquake and my little sister is badly injured,” her brother Mohammad Hameed said. “She was injured and (now) she has left us.”
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had earlier said 25 people had been killed and that most of casualties were in Azad Kashmir.
Many people from the area slept outdoors overnight and some were returning home on Wednesday to collect belongings and inspect damage.
NDMA Chairman Lieutenant General Muhammad Afzal said the authority would bring in 200 family-sized tents for temporary shelters, kitchen sets, blankets and 50,000 bottles of water.
Troops and other emergency responders carried out rescue operations through the night, with engineers starting repairs on a key road that was severely damaged, the Pakistan Army’s communications arm said. Afzal said the road will reopen by Thursday evening. Three bridges were also damaged.
Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa also visited on Wednesday the earthquake-affected areas of Azad and Jammu Kashmir, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations.
The army chief visited the affected areas in AJK and observed the ongoing repair efforts on the Jaltan Canal Road, which faced damage due to the earthquake. The DG ISPR quoted the army chief as saying that normalcy will be restored with speed and full assistance will be given to the administration.
