BAGH, Oct 20: The Pakistan Army’s brigade headquarters and its allied installations in Bagh and the military infrastructure at several forward and rear positions in different parts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir have been left devastated by the October 8 earthquake.

A number of military buildings housing offices, residential accommodation and other military facilities in the brigade headquarters have been completely destroyed.

The building of the army public school and college, Bagh, suffered a massive blow and is now unsafe for use. The military’s medical facility in Bagh city has also been destroyed.

The military camp in Harri Gahal and Arja — situated on the way to Bagh from Muzaffarabad — also depicts scenes of massive destruction as buildings and military compounds there have been reduced to ruins.

So is the case with the army’s Nisar Camp, situated close to the Neelum river in Muzaffarabad. The civil and military hospital in the city has been flattened by the Oct 8 quake.

The damage suffered by military buildings in Bagh and Muzaffarabad should raise questions about the quality of construction.

During a visit to the site of the devastated brigade headquarters this reporter saw a large number of Pakistani troops busy in removing rubble, setting up tents to establish temporary residential facilities for the reinforcements, and cutting trees to crating landing space for military helicopters taking part in the rescue and relief operation.

Officials of security agencies involved in rescue activities at the site of the devastated military installations say the military death toll could turn out to be higher than the figure so far estimated by the army. The ISPR has announced that some 450 troops were killed in quake-related destruction.

Security personnel, however, reject the impression that a senior officer of the rank of brigadier also perished in the earthquake.

“The brigade commander was recovered alive and is now under treatment,” a soldier said.

Officials said that sufficient reinforcements had arrived and forward positions had been consolidated by deploying fresh troops in those areas where landslides, caused by the earthquake, wiped out bunkers at several places on the Line of Control.

“The situation is well under control,” said a senior official of security forces.

Meanwhile, the medical facility set up by the Pakistan Army in the stadium of the Government Degree College, Bagh, is functioning round-the-clock with a huge number of survivors making it to the town from the outskirts and from far-off villages.

Survivors with multiple fractures or requiring orthopaedic surgery, said an official of the military’s field hospital, were airlifted to the main cities. Those requiring bandages or treatment for minor wounds were administered first aid at the field hospital.

“Between 30 and 35 injured are airlifted everyday from here to hospitals down country,” said an official of the medical facility. He said the injured from Bagh were being shifted to civil and military hospitals in Multan and Gujranwala after the military hospitals in Rawalpindi, Kharian and Mangla overflowed with patients.

A team of the Pakistan Army’s engineering corps was seen hammering its way through to the debris of the hostel of the Post Graduate College, Bagh.

Local people who had launched a rescue operation shortly after the building caved in said an army officer had recovered bodies of 30 to 35 students from the rubble.