Saturday January 27 7:32 AM ET
Nearly 15,000 Feared Dead in Indian Quake

By Kamil Zaheer

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Nearly 15,000 people may have died in a powerful earthquake that ripped through India's western state of Gujarat on Friday, Star Television news reported federal Defense Minister George Fernandes as saying on Saturday.

``Today, George Fernandes said that in all of Gujarat, around 15,000 people have been killed,'' the television channel reported Fernandes as saying in Bhuj, the worst affected city in the state.

The television network said that the death toll from India's worst earthquake in half a century was still rising.

A police official in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, said earlier nearly 10,000 people were feared dead.

Much of Bhuj had been reduced to rubble, and many of those buildings left standing were badly cracked.

Facing another night without water or power, and living in the persistent fear of aftershocks, survivors were desperately trying to get away.

Tempers frayed as crowds gathered at petrol pumps trying to get fuel to fill up scooters, cars, autorickshaws and jeeps.

Earlier a number of people were rescued from the rubble, including five pulled out 24 hours after the quake.

But the soldiers and rescue workers combing the debris were beginning to give up hope of finding more people alive. ``We are basically recovering dead bodies,'' one army official said.''

A senior police official in Bhuj said that according to initial reports about 350 schoolchildren were missing in the remote town of Anjar.

They had been taking part in a parade to celebrate India's Republic Day when the earthquake hurled debris into the narrow lane where they were marching.

Another 50 had been dragged out alive, he said.

The earthquake, measured at 7.9 on the Richter scale by the U.S. Geological Survey, felled buildings across the prosperous agricultural and industrial state of Gujarat, from Ahmedabad in the hinterland to Bhuj, in the coastal marshlands of Kutch.

Along the cracked roads leading to Bhuj, collapsed houses, buildings and temples dotted the landscape, witnesses said.

Injured people and families were sleeping in the open in the villages along the road. Stunned survivors pushed handcarts carrying injured relatives, desperately seeking medical help.

Many bodies had been burned, but often had not been cremated properly. The remains of several people were still smoldering.

In Ahmedabad, rescue workers continued to claw at the rubble, but in many places reached the victims too late. They spoke of voices which had gone silent in the night as they carried on the grim task of pulling dead bodies from the rubble.

Nearly 30 high school students died, trapped in a stairwell at their school as they tried to escape.

Residents Blame Illegal Building Construction

Many Ahmedabad residents expressed anger that recently constructed buildings had been built illegally, flouting regulations meant to limit the risk of collapse in this earthquake-prone zone.

Rescue operations began quickly in bigger cities like Ahmedabad, a prosperous textile and gold trading town of some five million people.

But in the remote towns near the epicenter of the quake, in the marshy district of Kutch, many were still waiting for help.

In Pakistan, at least eight people were killed and many injured in the southern province of Sindh.

The quake hit with terrifying intensity on Friday as many people were at home preparing to celebrate Republic Day, the anniversary of India's transition to a republic in 1950.

Long after the quake, aftershocks continued to strike fear into the survivors, keeping them out in the open. Dr. G J Nair, head of the seismology department of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Bombay, said as of 10:30 a.m. local time (midnight EST), some 196 aftershocks registering 3.5 or above on the Richter scale had been recorded.

The Indian army and air force swung into a massive rescue effort, flying in satellite telecommunications equipment to restore Gujarat's links with the rest of the country.

Hospital officials said it was becoming steadily more difficult to cope with the torrent of patients and corpses.

``This was probably one of the worst experiences I have ever had -- you could call it the longest day,'' said Anil Chadha, superintendent of Ahmedabad's Civil Hospital.

``The worst part was looking at those 50-odd bodies that arrived in one big gush.''

Many people had died of asphyxia or were trampled in stampedes, doctors said.

Offers Of Help From Overseas

Offers of help flowed in from several countries as well as from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Pakistan military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, setting aside differences with nuclear rival India over the disputed state of Kashmir, sent a message of sympathy to Vajpayee.

``The government and people of Pakistan share the grief of the bereaved families,'' he said.

It was the world's second major quake of the year. On January 13, a quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale killed at least 700 people in El Salvador and left 10 percent of its population homeless. A quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale killed more than 2,400 people in Taiwan in 1999.

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