ISLAMABAD: In the remote quake-hit mountain village of Lamnian, most homes have been destroyed, there are no tools to sift through the rubble and residents are busy burying the dead.
Hope of finding survivors in the ruins was virtually nil as rescue efforts have ground to a standstill, according to Jan-Peter Stellema, who works for the Paris-based medical aid charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in Lamnian.
“I’ve seen very little rescue operations going on today and when I ask people, sometimes they say, ‘Well, we heard them yesterday but then they died’,” Stellema told the BBC.
“People don’t have tools or anything. It’s such a disaster. I think there are still many dead under the rubble,” Stellema told the BBC from the village, 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Line of Control in Kashmir.
“It’s really terrible. All houses are destroyed. The whole bazaar has tumbled down,” he said, adding that 60 children and their teacher had been killed when a village school caved in.
“People are burying their dead. Our neighbours have lost three little girls. People are mourning, people are crying, men are digging graves. It’s quite a sad story.”
Stellema recently arrived in Lamnian with two other expatriate staff to launch an MSF project on safe motherhood. On Saturday, he found himself running for his life after the earthquake rocked the region.
“I was inside the house doing job interviews with new drivers ... and suddenly the walls and the floor and everything started moving. So everybody ran out and 10 seconds later, the whole house collapsed,” he said.
Stellema said he and another MSF staff member had to dig through heaps of debris to save a colleague trapped in the building. The woman was later evacuated to Islamabad.
The official from the Nobel prize-winning organization said villagers desperately needed tents, plastic sheeting, food and medicine, but that mountain roads were totally blocked.
“I’m so cut off from the outside world. All the roads are gone. The only means of communication in this whole valley is the satellite telephone that I’m talking through right now,” Stellema said.—AFP
