Pakistan mourns 73,000 killed in quake last year

Muzaffarabad (Pakistan), Oct 8: Pakistan united in mourning today to remember around 73,000 people killed in an earthquake exactly a year ago.

A week into Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, Pakistan's mosques have been even more crowded than usual. Today worshippers prayed in unison for the dead and survivors alike to mark the first anniversary of the nation's worst disaster.

''This day has revived my sorrows because I have lost many loved ones,'' said Abdul Rahim in Muzaffarabad. ''May God give courage to our new generation to rebuild this city,'' said Rahim, 65, as he waited for a commemoration ceremony to begin at a stadium near the Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir's capital's ruined university.

Sirens sounded across the nation to start a minute's silence.

The quake struck at 8.52 am on a Saturday morning, at a time when schools and government offices were full.

With an intensity measured at 7.6, it lasted less than two minutes yet destroyed the homes of more than 3 million people in North West Frontier Province and Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir.

A further 1,500 people were killed in Kashmir.

Shared grief has failed to push Pakistan and India towards a solution to their longstanding territorial dispute over Kashmir, the cause of two wars since they won independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

With a second winter just a couple of months away, and many victims still living in tents or makeshift shelters, critics accused the government authority overseeing relief, rebuilding and rehabilitation of dragging its feet in dispensing funds and setting appropriate guidelines for earthquake-proof construction of new homes.

Several hundred survivors protested outside parliament in Islamabad yesterday, accusing reconstruction officials of corruption, although foreign observers believe any graft is occurring at very local levels rather than at the centre.

''For the past four and a half months, I have received not a single penny,'' said Gohar Rehman, a father of five who had come from Muzaffarabad to join the demonstrations.

Briefing donor governments and international lenders last week, President Pervez Musharraf said complete reconstruction could take five years, but he set a target of end-2008 for all houses to be built.

Relief agencies seeking funds to keep operations going in a quake zone the size of New Zealand, spread across the western Himalayan foothills, have said that up to 1.8 million people could be at risk of cold and sickness over the winter.

Musharraf says those fears are overblown, and just 35,000 people will have to pass the winter in tents in a region where mountain communities endure freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall.

But the president said Pakistan needed a further 800 million dollars in aid, as 600,000 new homes had to be built. This is 50 per cent more than the government had estimated when donors stumped up 6.5 billion dollars at a conference a month after the catastrophe to cover the cost of emergency relief and reconstruction.

Reuters

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