Pakistan earthquake kills at least 20 people, injures hundreds

3 yıl önce

An earthquake killed at least 20 people and wounded 300 more when it struck near a mountainous part of southwest Pakistan in the early hours of Thursday.

The 5.9-magnitude tremor jolted many people out of their beds as dozens of mud houses collapsed. It made roofs cave in and walls fall down, footage showed, damaging buildings and bringing crowds out into the streets before dawn in the district of Harnai in Balochistan province.

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People searched for each other in the dark and some treated a baby’s wounds out in the open under the torch light of mobile phones.

Others lay down on stretchers waiting for ambulances to take them to hospital. Rescue workers and medics arrived to look for victims in the ravages and give first aid to those who were stranded, while the country’s leaders ordered emergency relief to the quake zone.

A military unit also flew in to help with search efforts and with determining the scale of the damage.

Army helicopters airlifted at least nine people with critical injuries, including children with bandages wrapped around their heads, out to the city of Quetta, where residents also felt the ground shake miles away, the country’s national news agency said.

The earthquake struck around 3 a.m. local time in Pakistan east of Quetta at a shallow depth of 9 km, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The head of the province’s Disaster Management Authority, Naseer Ahmed Nasir, told The Washington Post that it had recorded 20 deaths and 300 injuries but that it was still conducting rescue operations.

Pakistan has seen several deadly earthquakes in the past. In a disaster that rattled the country in 2005, a 7.6 magnitude quake killed more than 70,000 people and left many more homeless near the Himalayan region of Pakistan and disputed Kashmir.

Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.