More than 18,000 people were killed when a powerful earthquake struck northern Pakistan, a military spokesman said Sunday, in a disaster that entombed hundreds of children in their schools, flattened a high-rise apartment building in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and devastated an untold number of villages.
The 7.6-magnitude quake struck just after 8:50 a.m. Saturday in the disputed territory of Kashmir, and reverberated across an area of northern Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. The epicenter was in a mountainous region approximately 60 miles northeast of Islamabad, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told Pakistan's Geo television network Sunday that 17,000 of the dead were in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir. Thousands more were wounded and missing.
In India, the death toll was in the hundreds. But rescue teams have yet to reach many areas, including Balakot, a town in northern Pakistan that was reduced to rubble. Survivors said that at least 5,000 people were killed in the town, but that number could not be confirmed. With rescuers thwarted by landslides and heavy rainfall, parents clawed through the rubble looking for their children.
