Kashmir: 275 dead, counting

Uri town and its adjoining villages on the Line of Control, silent after years of shelling, were worst hit.

Deputy Commissioner, Baramulla, Ajaz Ahmad Kakroo said that 52 villages in the Uri area have been destroyed in the quake.

‘‘Several of them are inaccessible. We don’t have a clear idea of the damage to life and property here,’’ he said as a shocked administration tried to mount a rescue operation with the help of the army.

J-K Chief Secretary Vijay Bakaya put the preliminary death toll at 228 civilians, 36 Army men and seven BSF personnel.

He said 875 civilians were also injured while 1,100 houses and other structures were damaged. Besides Uri, the deaths were reported from Srinagar city where three persons including a five-year-old boy were killed, Tangdhar (52 dead, 200 injured), Kupwara (1 dead), Baramulla (7 killed and 300 injured), Bandipore (4 dead and 10 injured).

Director Meteoreology V K Mohanty told The Sunday Express that the earthquake hit at 9.20 am with its epicentre near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. ‘‘It was a high-magnitude quake and was recorded at 7.4 on the Richter Scale,’’ he said. ‘‘It was followed by 12 low-intensity aftershocks. There is every likelihood that tremors will continue.’’

Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed flew to Uri and ordered immediate relief and rescue measures. Speaking to journalists at Army’s helipad where he met the injured, Mufti said that medical teams and ration have been rushed to the affected area and tents will be provided to the quake-hit.

But just 10 km away, Jabla was still inaccessible and there was no sign of government help. The narrow winding road up the mountains had caved in at several places. And The Sunday Express team was the first team to arrive here. ‘‘We don’t know how many people have died. We have lost count,’’ said Mohammad Latief Mir, the village headman. ‘‘The entire village is a rubble. Look at the houses. There is nothing left in the village.’’

Shabir Ahmad was carrying his grandmother on his shoulders. ‘‘She was lucky. I saw her caught under the rubble and took her out. Her leg has fractured,’’ he said. As there was no medical help available, the villagers tied a cloth around her wounded limb and then Ahmad started a treacherous walk to Uri town where the Army had set up an emergency medical camp.

In the corner of the village, a lone woman was washing the body of her two-month-old son. ‘‘I had stepped out of the house just a minute before. He was sleeping inside the house,’’ she said. ‘‘Then the earth shook and I fell down. I saw the walls of our house collapse. He had come under the wall and was dead when we took him out.’’

The villagers said they had nothing to eat and nowhere to stay at night. ‘‘We have been fasting. There is not even water to drink. The water pipes too have been damaged by the quake,’’ said Mohammad Aziz Mir, a villager. ‘‘There is no place to go to sleep,’’ he said.

Few villagers had put up blankets and tin sheets to set up temporary tents. But when the evening fell, it started raining.

A few dozen miles ahead of Jabla where the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road was blocked by a landslide triggered by the quake, a group of men and women of Kalgi village had assembled to hurriedly bury a woman, Rasheeda Begum, and her son Ali Khan. In this village of 1,500, residents were still looking under the rubble for their missing relatives.

At the Uri Brigade headquarters where the Army had set up a temporary hospital, six-year-old Majid was looking for his mother. The troops had evacuated him from his village Sultan Daki when they went out in a chopper to look for survivors. The Army, in fact, had suffered major damages. The official death toll of the Army is 36 but sources reveal that dozens of bunkers have been buried under landslides triggered by quakes in forward areas. There are more than a dozen remote villages where even the Army has not been able to reach for rescue operations.

In Uri town, the buildings of the local police station, hospital and a higher secondary school had collapsed. Four policemen and a six-year-old son of the Sub Divisional Police Officer, Uri died.