Landslides claim more Indian lives

As he watched in shock from a nearby field, the quake-triggered landslide -- echoing like "tank fire on a battlefield" -- mowed down trees 1.5m thick, bombarded houses and enveloped the village in dust that turned day into dusk.

By the time the slide's deadly run ended in the Jabla Nala River far below, nearly half the village's 296 buildings had been shattered. Only the skeleton of Mohammad's two-story home still stood, the inside gutted by boulders and other detritus off the steep mountainside.

"I had just invested in a new kitchen, but I didn't even have a chance to enjoy a single cup of tea in it," said the 35-year-old breadwinner for 14 family members.

His injured mother was dug out from under the rubble and the only other person inside, his leprosy-afflicted father, miraculously survived.

Jabla was not alone. Landslides tumbled across the zone of the Oct. 8 earthquake, dramatizing not only the power a quake can unleash, but how humans have brought tragedy upon themselves through massive deforestation and other ecological assaults on the mighty Himalayas.

The Oct. 8 quake is estimated to have killed some 79,000 people on both sides of the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between Pakistan and India, although the number of those buried in landslides is as yet unclear.

In the quake-hit region of Pakistan, just two kilometers from Jabla, landslides swept away uncounted numbers of homes. They severed roads, cutting off hundreds of communities which can now only be reached by helicopter.

Mountain slopes were shorn away in many areas, exposing gray earth and rubble that still emitted great clouds of dust two weeks after the quake. Aftershocks keep triggering new slides, hampering efforts to clear roads for relief trucks.

"If there had been more trees, we would not have lost as much. The impact would not have been as great. It is our mistake," said Qayoon Shah, a young teacher, standing by the ruins of the village school.