The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck at 0350 GMT (0850am PST) and was centred about 95km northeast of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, near the mountainous.

“The earthquake has taken a toll of more than 300 people, including civilians and soliders,” a spokesman said after an emergency cabinet meeting attended by PM Manmohan Singh.

The border areas of Uri, Kupwara and Baramulla in Kashmir were the worst hit, with many mud and stone houses buried under landslides and others developing cracks in their walls, authorities and witnesses said.

Uri, the last big town on the highway connecting the two sides of Kashmir, and its nearby areas accounted for about 130 of the deaths, authorities said.

It resembled a ghost town with flattened houses and no electricity. Scores of people sat in leaky tents, shivering in drizzle, with occasional lightning revealing crumbled houses across the town of 25,000 people.

Baramulla police superintendent Ashkoor Wani said the death toll could rise as many villages were cut off by landslides, adding: “Many bodies could be trapped under the debris”.

The landslides also blocked a key 300-km highway that connects Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, to the rest of India to the south.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road linking Indian and Pakistani Kashmir — reopened earlier this year to traffic for the first time in nearly 60 years — was also blocked.

In Baramulla, a large town on the same highway, several injured people, their heads bandaged, sat dazed in front of their houses and by the side of streets amid a steady drizzle. Many houses had collapsed and narrow alleys were blocked by rubble.

Residents complained that they were yet to get any help from the government, hours after the quake struck.—Reuters