Afghan President Hamid Karzai brought help yesterday for Pakistani victims of the massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands, as relief workers pulled more corpses from the rubble and the UN warned that 800,000 people remain without shelter.
The US army began setting up a field hospital and Pakistan's army said it planned to send another brigade -- usually about 3,000 soldiers -- to Muzaffarabad, the capital of its portion of Kashmir -- to help in the relief effort and the grueling task of clearing debris, army spokesman Major Farooq Nasir said.
Eighteen more bodies were found in collapsed buildings in the city on Sunday, he said.
PHOTO: AP
Two children from a displaced family suffered burns over 80 percent of their bodies when their tent caught fire in the northern town of Balakot late on Sunday, according to another spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan.
Army helicopters using night vision equipment quickly evacuated them to a military hospital but one, a 12-year-old girl, died yesterday morning from her injuries. The other, a boy about age 7, is in critical condition. Seven other people burned in the fire were shifted to a hospital on Monday. It was unclear what caused the fire.
Aftershocks
Powerful aftershocks were still rattling the region more than two weeks after the 7.6-magnitude temblor wrecked a huge swathe of northern Pakistan and the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing an estimated 79,000 people, including 1,360 on the Indian side.
A magnitude-6.0 quake rocked Pakistani-held Kashmir on Sunday. No one was killed in that aftershock, but an earlier tremor on Sunday killed five people in Afghanistan's eastern Zabul Province near the Pakistan border.
The Afghan president arrived in Islamabad yesterday for a one-day visit and talks with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Karzai brought 5 tonnes of medicines and medical equipment, as well as 30 doctors and nurses who will travel to the quake zone, said Rafiullah Mujaddedi, an official in the president's media department.
Some 100 US soldiers arrived in Muzaffarabad yesterday in a 40-vehicle convoy to set up the army's only Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. Three isolation units had to be left behind as the winding road into Kashmir wasn't wide enough, but the MASH still has a capacity for emergency care and operations, and beds or cots for up to 84 patients.
On Sunday, US General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, said the US would step up its relief efforts. He said 11 more Chinook helicopters would join the existing 17 US helicopters flying missions into the quake zone.
In an unusual convergence of appeals, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to send as much aid as they could to quake victims in Pakistan, despite Musharraf's alliance with the US in its war on terrorism.
Al-Qaeda appeal
"You should send as much aid as you can to the victims, regardless of Musharraf's relations with the Americans," Osama bin Laden's deputy said in a recorded message broadcast on al-Jazeera TV.
More than 3 million people are believed homeless after the quake. Rashid Kalikov, UN coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Muzaffarabad, said 800,000 of those people still had no shelter whatsoever, with winter looming.
The tragedy is pushing Pakistan and India to lay aside their differences. The two were inching closer to a deal in which they would overlook their long-standing dispute over Kashmir for the sake of helping the quake victims, allowing them to cross the disputed border.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS