Rescue missions launched as Pakistan quake toll hits 30,000

ISLAMABAD - Children starting their first lessons of the day were among thousands of victims buried by a devastating earthquake which levelled parts of Pakistan.

In village after village, school buildings collapsed on top of students, trapping hundreds.

With hands, picks and shovels, desperate parents struggled to reach more than 850 children trapped in the rubble of two schools. The voices of children and the anguished wails of their parents accompanied the frantic work in the Balakot valley in the mountains of Northwest Frontier Province.

"Save me, call my mother, call my father," came the faint voice of a boy, again and again, from the rubble of a Government school in which local people said about 200 children were trapped.

"Bring out my child, bring out my child," his mother wailed, beating her chest as other parents and relatives pulled out the bodies of four children.

The quake struck just before 9am on Saturday (5pm NZT), when schools were in session.

For presenters on Pakistan's PTV morning news, the only thing to do was join the nation in prayer.

As a violent two-minute tremor shook their studio in mid-broadcast, they broke off their discussion, held their hands aloft and began chanting verses from the Koran.

Their prayers for the nation went unanswered.

The huge earthquake devastated homes and buildings across hundreds of square kilometres and left a death toll that officials said was more than 30,000 people in Pakistan alone. At least 40,000 people were injured.

Desperate rescue missions were launched to free hundreds trapped under rubble in the worst-hit cities.

The fate of scores of villages in remote areas remained unknown as phone lines were cut and roads were blocked by landslides.

"The damage and casualties could be massive and it is a national tragedy," said Major-General Shaukat Sultan, the Pakistani Army's chief spokesman.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake had an epicentre 100km northeast of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. It was the strongest to hit South Asia in a century. The tremors caused damage stretching into India and Afghanistan, with tower blocks swaying from Kabul to New Delhi.

In Islamabad, scores of people were feared dead after two 12-storey blocks of flats collapsed, leaving an enormous pile of concrete and twisted metal.

Crowds tried frantically to dig through the towers' remains with their bare hands, plucking dust-covered survivors from piles of bloodstained masonry.

Rescuers searched by torchlight through the night for others, many of whom were thought to have still been in bed when the quake hit.

"I just cannot say how many people are still under there and we are trying to evacuate them," said Mohammad Ali, a Government official in Islamabad. "Over 75 apartments were affected, so the number of people is in the hundreds."

Residents have long been accustomed to earth tremors in the area, which lies on a fault line.

One witness described looking out of a window and seeing the telegraph poles and lamp-posts "dancing" across the city.

Although the plate movement was about 10km below ground, the quake was "quite shallow", said David Applegate, senior science adviser to the US Geological Survey.

"That means the shaking is going to be very intense."

A series of aftershocks raised tensions further, with residents keeping an anxious eye on flocks of crows which, according to local legend, are believed to fall silent immediately before an earthquake.

The devastation will be a further blow to a poverty-stricken province where more than 44,000 people have been killed during the 16-year-long separatist insurgency.

Last night an international aid effort was under way. United States President George W. Bush offered military helicopters.

The Swiss Government put an aircraft on standby to fly a United Nations disaster and coordination team to Pakistan while China sent a rescue team.

- AGENCIES