From NWFP rubble: ‘Save me, call my mother, call my father’

Scores of children have been buried. ‘‘It is God’s will that my daughter has been taken, but my heart cannot accept the way she went,’’ said Ramazan, who looked far older than his 45 years. ‘‘I can’t get her wounded face out of my mind.’’

Surrounded by the flattened houses of his neighbours, neither Ramazan’s voice nor his stony face betrayed the emotion his words contained. Elsewhere in the town, 14-year-old Shagusta sat sobbing with a group of older women. She missed school on Saturday otherwise she would in all likelihood have been crushed to death. ‘‘These funerals will go on for a long time,’’ Shagusta said. ‘

‘‘Save me, call my mother, call my father,’’ came the faint voice of a boy, again and again, from the rubble of a government school in which local people said about 200 children were trapped.‘‘Bring out my child, bring out my child,’’ his mother wailed, beating her chest as other parents and relatives pulled out the bodies of four children, bringing the Sunday morning’s toll to eight.

At the private Shaheen School, another 650 children were trapped inside the four-storey building.

Another father looking for his lost children said he had given up hope. ‘‘My three children are still buried under that school. I’ve been searching for them since that morning. But only God can save them now. I’ve lost hope,’’ said Farid, hanging his head.

—Reuters