Quake toll 300 in held Kashmir - Newspaper - DAWN.

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Quake toll 300 in held

Kashmir
PUBLISHED OCT 09, 2005 12:00AM

URI (India), Oct 8: More than

300 people were killed in held
Kashmir on Saturday after a
major earthquake damaged
hundreds of houses and
triggered landslides that

buried huts and blocked

highways, authorities said.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck at 0350
GMT (0850am PST) and was centred about 95km
northeast of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, near the
mountainous.
The earthquake has taken a toll of more than 300
people, including civilians and soliders, a spokesman
said after an emergency cabinet meeting attended by PM
Manmohan Singh.
The border areas of Uri, Kupwara and Baramulla in
Kashmir were the worst hit, with many mud and stone
houses buried under landslides and others developing
cracks in their walls, authorities and witnesses said.

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Quake toll 300 in held Kashmir - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

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Uri, the last big town on the highway connecting the two
sides of Kashmir, and its nearby areas accounted for
about 130 of the deaths, authorities said.
It resembled a ghost town with flattened houses and no
electricity. Scores of people sat in leaky tents, shivering
in drizzle, with occasional lightning revealing crumbled
houses across the town of 25,000 people.
Baramulla police superintendent Ashkoor Wani said the
death toll could rise as many villages were cut off by
landslides, adding: Many bodies could be trapped under
the debris.

The landslides also blocked a key 300-km highway that

connects Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, to the

rest of India to the south.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road linking Indian and
Pakistani Kashmir reopened earlier this year to traffic
for the first time in nearly 60 years was also blocked.
In Baramulla, a large town on the same highway, several
injured people, their heads bandaged, sat dazed in front
of their houses and by the side of streets amid a steady
drizzle. Many houses had collapsed and narrow alleys
were blocked by rubble.
Residents complained that they were yet to get any help
from the government, hours after the quake struck.
Reuters

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03/02/2016