Quake in Pakistan kills ten

Ten people died in an earthquake in northern Pakistan today, government officials said.

The 4.5-magnitude tremor’s epicentre was near Gilgit, about 125 miles north of Islamabad, said Chaudhry Mehmood Arif, an official in the Seismic Centre in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Arif said the tremor was an aftershock from quakes that on Saturday shook the town of Skardu, 75 miles southeast of Gilgit, and was centred in the Himalayas.

Four villages, with a total population of 1,500, took the brunt of the tremors, Information Minister Nisar Memon said. Several homes were destroyed there, and 10 bodies were found in the rubble, he said.

At least 48 others were hurt, with many of them in serious condition, authorities said.

The Pakistan military was taking many of the injured out by helicopter because landslides had blocked the only road leading to the quake site.

According to The Associated Press of Pakistan, the tremors also damaged a portion of the northern highway that weaves through the Himalayan Mountains to the border with China.