Protests over slow rescue efforts

Angry villagers briefly blocked roads today in earthquake-ravaged regions of Indian-controlled Kashmir, protesting at the slow pace of rescue and aid efforts in reaching their destroyed homes.

The death toll from Saturday’s 7.6 magnitude earthquake rose to 465 in India after rescue workers and soldiers pulled out 90 more bodies in the frontier Tangdar region, 65 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state.

The brunt of the quake was faced by Pakistan.

The Indian army has flown in planeloads of medicines, food and drinking water to the worst-hit Baramulla district, said Jammu-Kashmir state’s Chief Secretary Vijay Bakaya.

More than 1,000 tents were being distributed in remote villages flattened by the quake.

Soldiers and volunteers used bulldozers and bare hands today to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble of houses and buildings.

However, many people complained that they had received no help from government agencies and the military.

Some 200 angry residents blocked the main road between Baramulla and the border town of Uri for about 45 minutes, demanding that soldiers with aid and journalists go to their mountainside villages, which they said were being ignored.

“Everything is destroyed – the ground shook and took everything down,” said Syad Hassan, pointing toward the peaks surrounding the valley road.

The quake killed at least 65 people in his home village, Namala, and three neigbouring villages, he said, but no aid had been provided to them.

“All the government people, the press people, they are just driving past,” he said.

Farid Khan, a farmer in Jabla, a village about 70 miles north of Srinagar, told an Associated Press reporter, “No one has come to help us. Yesterday, we buried 20 people in the village, including my five-year-old daughter. We don’t know how many more people are lying under the debris.”

Khan watched helplessly as his wife lay writhing in pain on a cot nearby, her ribs broken after their house collapsed.

Officials blamed the slow response on difficult conditions in the area.

Heavy rains overnight hampered rescuers and relief distribution, said B.B. Vyas, divisional commissioner of Jammu-Kashmir. Mud, debris and knee-high slush from landslides blocked roads, cutting off many remote villages.

Officials in India feared their country’s toll of 450 would rise as severed telephone lines are restored and more reports come in from isolated villages. Some 900 people were injured, said Bakaya.