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By Kamil Zaheer
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| Reuters Photo |
BHUJ, India
(Reuters) - Fresh tremors, hunger and thirst added to the anguish
on Sunday of tens of thousands of dazed survivors of a giant earthquake
which rocked western India claiming some 15,000 lives.
In the town
of Bhuj, near the epicenter of Friday's quake, residents, rescue
workers and the injured who had spent a chilly night out in the
open were shaken awake by aftershocks.
As temperatures
climbed, people wandered around in confusion among the rubble
of the dusty city, barely reassured by a huge army presence.
There is a
severe shortage of food, water and fuel, virtually no electricity
and very little transport.
Among the
mounds of mangled steel and concrete, dotted with makeshift funeral
pyres, the occasional building which survived the quake jutted
up into clear blue sky.
Bhuj counted
many of the dead among its 150,000 people and thousands more were
believed to be still buried under debris.
Officials
warned of a serious risk of epidemic if trapped bodies were not
removed quickly.
``As the weather
is quite cold, the bodies are not rotting,'' one army official
told Reuters. ``But if they are not removed soon, there could
be a major risk of disease spreading.''
Temperatures
in the region can rise to 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit)
during the day, but fall sharply at night to below 10 degrees
Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit).
Bhuj, in the
marshy Kutch district on the western coast, is about 20 km (12
miles) from the epicenter of the quake, the most powerful to hit
India in half a century.
The quake,
measured at 7.9 on the Richter scale by the U.S. Geological Survey
, claimed victims across the western state of Gujarat, including
an estimated 500 in the prosperous gold-trading commercial capital
of Ahmedabad .
Two Days
After Quake, Few Pulled Out Alive
In Bhuj, army
rescuers with bulldozers and cranes combed through rubble which
towered 25 feet (eight meters) high in some places.
One college
student was pulled alive from a mound of debris in which he had
been trapped for more than 36 hours, providing a brief respite
from the grim task of unearthing dead bodies.
The boy's
weeping father and other relatives kept vigil all through the
rescue effort, urging the soldiers to greater effort.
In Ahmedabad
as well, officials said two people had been pulled out alive,
30 hours after the quake.
Officials
have been unable to give an exact death toll from the quake but
have said up to 15,000 were feared to have died.
But many were
beginning to say that the numbers had become meaningless, the
sheer scale of the tragedy still unfolding as more and more bodies
were unearthed from the rubble.
Newspapers
on Sunday published varying estimates of the death toll from 15,000
to 30,000. The Indian Express simply left a question mark over
the number.
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| Reuters Photo |
A government
official in the Gujarat capital Gandhinagar said 6,072 bodies
had been recovered by early Sunday, 5,000 from Bhuj alone. Official
figures showed 40,512 people had been injured.
More than
250 aftershocks hampered rescue efforts.
G.J. Nair,
head of the seismology division of the Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre (BARC) in Bombay, told Reuters Sunday morning's tremor
had recorded about six on the Richter scale. ''It was a sufficiently
big shock,'' he said.
Though it
appeared to have caused no damage it sowed panic in Ahmedabad,
where terrified residents who had returned to their homes ran
out again into the streets.
Television
showed pictures of one woman breaking down in tears in the Surat,
in the state's southeast, and repeating; ''I'm really afraid,
I'm really afraid,'' while one official warned of a risk of stampede
as panic set in.
Hospitals
Overflow With The Injured
In Ahmedabad,
there was a long queue at the local electric crematorium. ``I
have been sitting here since last (Saturday) night. My number
will come today,'' said a dazed man who had come to cremate a
relative.
At the city
hospital, the injured spilled out of the packed wards into the
corridors and out into the grass outside. Some had intravenous
drips hooked up to bushes.
Six-year-old
Rashmi, fully-bandaged after multiple fractures, lay on her father's
lap on the road outside the hospital where doctors were attending
to her.
``We were
able to come out, but one of our daughters was stuck inside,''
said the distraught father. The two had come from Morbi, a small
town 150 km (90 miles) from Ahmedabad.
Special trains
from India's main cities ferried anxious relatives to Gujarat.
Many waiting on station platforms had had no news of their families
since the quake.
Gujarat Home
(Interior) Minister Haren said a massive rescue and relief operation
had been launched in Bhuj and priority was being given to restoring
communications in the area.
Public health
teams were flown in to Bhuj and Ahmedabad to fight against any
outbreak of disease.
The region
has a history of plague. In 1994, 54 people died in an outbreak
of pneumonic plague in Surat.
Thousands
of troops, engineers and doctors joined the relief effort. The
Air Force said it had 40 cargo planes and military aircraft ferrying
engineering equipment, mobile kitchens, food, water, tents, blankets
and power generators.
Many countries
offered help.
Neighboring
Pakistan, putting aside its differences with nuclear rival India,
said it would provide relief. The quake killed at least 15 people
there.
Rescue teams,
sniffer dogs and relief funds from Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy,
the United Nations and Turkey were set to arrive in India on the
weekend.
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