Friday, January 15, 2010

Remembering the Kashmir Quake: 46,000 Dead

MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 14: Municipal workers recovered 18 bodies on Thursday, four years after the Oct 8, 2005 earthquake that killed nearly 46,000 people in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

The wagon they were travelling in was found in the Kamsar Nullah area, some five kilometres north of here, during the widening of the Neelum Valley road by a Chinese company.

The wagon and 14 of the people trapped inside it were identified from the registration plate and national identity cards. A woman passenger was identified from her clothes. Three other victims could not be identified. The owner of the vehicle, Raja Naeem, told reporters that it must have been hit by a landslide after it left a bus stop at about 8.30am on that fateful day, some 22 minutes before the calamity. “I assumed that it was buried somewhere in the Kamsar area,” he said. However, some people said the vehicle must have veered off the treacherous road.

Residents of the nearby areas helped in the rescue work and also provided the cloth for the shrouds. The relatives of the hitherto missing victims also reached the place to take away their bodies.

Those who could not be identified were buried in a nearby graveyard under the supervision of police.

From here.

No comments: