The death toll from a powerful earthquake in southwestern Pakistan rose to 327 people yesterday, local officials said.
“Two-hundred-and-eighty-five bodies have so far been recovered in the Awaran District,” said Abdul Rasheed Gogazai, the deputy commissioner of Awaran, the worst affected area.
“And 42 bodies were found in the neighboring Kech District,” he added.
PHOTO: AFP
Tuesday’s magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Baluchistan, a huge earthquake-prone province of deserts and rugged mountains, and was felt across South Asia.
Pakistan’s army airlifted hundreds of soldiers to help with the aftermath of the worst earthquake in the South Asian country since 2005, when about 75,000 people were killed in the north of the country.
Hundreds of mud houses collapsed on their inhabitants throughout the remote and thinly populated area, officials said.
“We have started to bury the dead,” Gogazai said.
It was hard for rescue teams to reach the area quickly because it is so remote, and some officials said the death toll was likely to rise as emergency workers progressed deeper into the mountains to assess the damage.
Mohammed Shabir, a journalist, described scenes of grief and chaos in villages, saying survivors were digging rows of graves and picking through the debris.
“As far as the human eye can see, all the houses here have been flattened,” he said from Awaran, adding that rescue teams were on the ground distributing supplies.
The earthquake struck Pakistan at a time when the country was still mourning the deaths of more than 80 Christians in a suicide bomb attack on an Anglican church in the city of Peshawar on Sunday.
To the south, on the beach near Gwadar port, crowds of bewildered residents gathered to witness the rare phenomenon of an island that the quake forced out of the sea.
The island has fascinated locals, but experts say it is unlikely to last long.
People were astonished to see a new piece of land surface from the waves.
“It is not a small thing, but a huge thing which has emerged from under the water,” Gwadar resident Muhammed Rustam said. “It looked very, very strange to me and also a bit scary because suddenly a huge thing has emerged from the water.”
Mohammed Danish, a marine biologist from Pakistan’s National Institute of Oceanography, said a team of experts had visited the island and found methane gas rising.
“Our team found bubbles rising from the surface of the island, which caught fire when a match was lit and we forbade our team to start any flame. It is methane gas,” Danish said on GEO television news.
The island is between 18m and 21m high, up to 91.4m wide and up to 37m long, he said. It sits about 20m away from the coast.
Gary Gibson, a seismologist with Australia’s University of Melbourne, said the new island was likely to be a “mud volcano,” created by methane gas forcing material upward during the violent shaking of the earthquake.
“It’s happened before in that area, but it’s certainly an unusual event, very rare,” Gibson said, adding that it was “very curious” to see such activity about 400km from the quake’s epicenter.
The so-called island is not a fixed structure, but a body of mud that will be broken down by wave activity and dispersed over time, the scientist said.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
Taiwan has experienced its most significant improvement in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, data provided on Sunday by international higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) showed. Compared with last year’s edition of the rankings, which measure academic excellence and influence, Taiwanese universities made great improvements in the H Index metric, which evaluates research productivity and its impact, with a notable 30 percent increase overall, QS said. Taiwanese universities also made notable progress in the Citations per Paper metric, which measures the impact of research, achieving a 13 percent increase. Taiwanese universities gained 10 percent in Academic Reputation, but declined 18 percent
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
UNDER DISCUSSION: The combatant command would integrate fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups to defend waters closest to the coastline, a source said The military could establish a new combatant command as early as 2026, which would be tasked with defending Taiwan’s territorial waters 24 nautical miles (44.4km) from the nation’s coastline, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday. The new command, which would fall under the Naval Command Headquarters, would be led by a vice admiral and integrate existing fast attack boat and anti-ship missile groups, along with the Naval Maritime Surveillance and Reconnaissance Command, said the source, who asked to remain anonymous. It could be launched by 2026, but details are being discussed and no final timetable has been announced, the source