Work begins to clear landslides and reach remote valleys amid fears casualties from Monday’s magnitude 7.5 quake could be higher in isolated regions
Pakistan has dispatched aircraft, road-clearing teams and rescuers to some of the country’s most isolated valleys in the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that has killed at least 339 people in the region and injured an estimated 2,000 more.
A surveillance flight was sent to assess damage caused by the magnitude 7.5 quake in neighbouring Afghanistan, while a C-130 transport plane loaded with rations, ready meals, tents and blankets was dispatched to Chitral, a far-flung former princely state that was especially badly hit.
The prolonged tremors were some of the worst the region has experienced in recent years and were felt hundreds of miles from the epicentre in Jurm, north-east Afghanistan.
By mid-morning the Pakistani army said its Frontier Works Organisation had cleared 27 of 45 landslides that had blocked the Karakoram highway, the strategically valued road link to China that winds through some of the world’s most forbidding mountain terrain.
Small aftershocks that continued to shake the region have not done any further damage, but schools in the city of Rawalpindi were kept shut as a precautionary measure.
Pakistan’s powerful army has taken a lead role in responding to the crisis, with extra resources pushed out to its various hospitals in the affected region
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/27/pakistan-army-leads-rescue-death-toll-afghanistan-earthquake-rises
