Quake kills more than 19,000 in South Asia
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-09 19:25

The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, an area stretching across some 625 miles across. In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed.

"We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan's history," chief army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

Authorities in India reported 360 deaths and 900 people injured, while Afghanistan reported four killed.

On Sunday, Pakistani military helicopters ferried troops and supplies to some hard-hit areas. But there was no sign of government help in Balakot, in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles north of Islamabad. The quake leveled the village's main bazaar, crushing shoppers and strewing gas cylinders, bricks, tomatoes and onions on the streets.

Injured people covered by shawls lay in the street, waiting for medical care. Residents carried bodies on wooden planks. The corpses of four children, aged between four and six, lay under a sheet of corrugated iron. Relatives said they were trying to find sheets to wrap the bodies.

"We don't have anything to bury them with," said a cousin, Saqib Swati.

Nearby, Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-old business administration student, stood outside the rubble of his four-story school, where at least 250 pupils were feared trapped. Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without any tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies.

Farooq said that he could hear children under the rubble crying for help immediately after the disaster on Saturday.

"Now there's no sign of life," he said. "We can't do this without the army's help. Nobody has come here to help us."