A major earthquake shook cities and villages across the south Asian subcontinent yesterday, wiping out several villages in Pakistan and leading to fears that the death toll could run into thousands.
Officials said heavy damage was expected in northern Pakistan, but details were difficult to obtain because telephone lines were down and mobile networks overwhelmed.
"The deaths could be running in the thousands. We do not have an exact figure for casualties at this moment, but it's massive," President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman, Major-General Shaukat Sultan, said following an aerial survey of stricken areas.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck at 8:50am local time and was centered in forest-clad mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, near the Indian border, about 95km northeast of Islamabad.
The first quake was followed by a series of frightening after-shocks between magnitudes of 5.4 and 6.3 -- the last also the biggest at 3:46pm.
They were felt across the subcontinent and shook buildings in the Afghan, Indian and Bangladeshi capitals of Kabul, New Delhi and Dhaka.
Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told ARY One television he had reports that several villages had been entirely wiped out.
More than 100 were killed in one district of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province alone, police said. Damage was also heavy in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, residents said.
Geo TV said 25 people had been killed in Pakistani Kashmir and about 30 in the Hazara area of North West Frontier Province.
President Musharraf went to the scene in Islamabad where scores of people were feared killed or trapped in two 12-story apartment blocks reduced to rubble.
"It is a test for all of us. It is a test for me, of the Prime Minister, of the government and of the entire nation and I am sure we will succeed," Musharraf said.
Some 80 to 100 people were believed trapped beneath the rubble, according to Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao.
Correspondents earlier saw the bodies of at least three people being pulled out, as well as six injured people pulled from the debris.
"The quake jolted me awake and I saw people running down the staircase," said Sabahat Ahmed, a resident of one of the blocks.
"By the time the second tremor hit, the building had already started to collapse. As the building was collapsing people were still coming out from it. I heard and saw various people in a state of panic and many stuck under the collapsed building," he said.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS