Quake death toll rises to 54,000

OFFICIALS last night sharply raised estimates of the dead from Pakistan’s monster quake to more than 54,000, while bad weather heaped more misery on hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors.

A fifth of the villages in the quake zone remained cut off eight days after the quake turned the lush mountainsides of the Himalayas into a death trap.

A spokesman for the prime minister of Pakistani Kashmir said at least 40,000 people died in the earthquake on October 8. Another 13,000 were killed in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, and about 1,350 in the part of Kashmir controlled by India.