PESHAWAR, Oct 10: The Peshawar High Court Bar Association claimed on Monday that no serious rescue operation had been undertaken in the far-flung areas of the NWFP so far and that local people themselves had been forced to retrieve bodies on their own without the support of any relief and rescue agencies.

Through a unanimously adopted resolution, the association condemned the indifference shown by the federal government towards the earthquake-hit districts of Mansehra, Abbottabad, Kohistan, Battagram, Shangla, Swat and others.

In an emergency meeting chaired by the president of the association, Muhammad Iqbal Mohmand, the speakers criticized the international rescue agencies and said that none of these groups had turned up in those areas even 72 hours after the quake.

The head of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Qazi Muhammad Jamil, said that the NWFP areas had been badly neglected by the federal and provincial governments. He said the government had been understating the magnitude of the tragedy afflicting Hazara and the adjoining region.

Mr Jamil stated that all schools in those areas had collapsed, resulting in the deaths of thousands of children. “This proves the pathetic condition of government schools constructed for ordinary children,” he said.

For the last three days, according to him, people have been sitting under the open sky without any relief work in sight. He said the quake victims had no food or drinking water and there were no medical facilities available to them.

Those who addressed the meeting included Barrister Masood Kausar, Syed Tahar Khan, Ghulam Nabi, Asthagfirullah Khan, Asadullah Chamkani, etc.

They criticised the statement given by the Peshawar corps commander, Lt. Gen Safdar Hussain, in which he stated that the number of killed persons were less than 1,000. They said the authorities had been under-estimating the scale of damage in the wake of the devastating earthquake.

They said that instead of trying to conceal the damage in those areas, the government should immediately dispatch rescue and relief teams to these areas.