EARTHQUAKE Violent, expansive lurch kills thousands

Many forced to leave unstable buildings now face death from exposure.
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A violent earthquake jolted Pakistan and its South Asian neighbors Saturday morning, crushing mountain villages and toppling buildings in cities. By nightfall, officials in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan reported more than 3,000 people dead and said the total will number thousands more.
The quake rattled a 1,700-mile swath of South Asia, from Afghanistan to Bangladesh. But it was most brutal in northern Pakistan, where it killed more than 200 girls when their school collapsed in the small town of Garhi Habibullah. The town lies near the quake's epicenter, about 60 miles north of Islamabad, the capital.
Pakistan's government declared the quake a national disaster. With snow and freezing conditions only weeks away in the mountains, for many people the disaster probably has only begun.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimated the earthquake's magnitude at 7.6, which would make it one of the strongest in years in this seismically unstable region. It was centered under the pine-wooded mountains of Kashmir, a Himalayan region disputed and divided between Pakistan and India.
Relief centers shattered
In Muzaffarabad, a city of about 90,000 near the epicenter, many or most government buildings collapsed, as well as hospitals, schools and homes, officials told reporters. At the office of the medical relief agency Doctors Without Borders, "Suddenly, the walls were of jelly," said Jan Peter Stellema, the group's Muzaffarabad representative. "We ran out," he told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview by satellite telephone, "and one minute later, the house was gone."
Relief workers reached by satellite phone said that, with hospitals and clinics shattered by the quake, hundreds of injured people were being lain outside on the ground. Radio stations and government officials urged people to spend the night outdoors, fearing that damaged buildings would collapse from aftershocks, which continued throughout the day.
That turned to disaster in mid-evening when thunderstorms strafed much of the region with rain and hail. In Mansehra, hundreds or thousands of people, injured and in shock, were jammed into the darkened grounds around the city's main hospital, said Gul Wali Khan, an aid worker with Catholic Relief Services. He said many now face death from exposure.
Kashmir
Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, and many of Kashmir's steep, narrow valleys were cut off from the outside world Saturday night, their roads blocked by landslides. Pakistani army helicopters were trying to land medical teams in the most badly destroyed valleys.
At least 200 people were confirmed dead in Indian-ruled Kashmir, to the east, officials told local journalists. India and Pakistan have fought several wars since they were partitioned in 1947, and Kashmir is heavily militarized. On both sides of the cease-fire line that forms the border, hundreds of the dead were soldiers in mountain bases, according to Indian and Pakistani television stations.
In a reflection of the improved relations between the countries in the past year, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered "any assistance with rescue and relief" to Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.
Beyond Kashmir, the quake caused at least light damage across much of northwest India. In New Delhi, the Indian capital, apartment buildings shook and swayed, and homes collapsed in the Indian states of Punjab and Gujarat.
The earthquake was the latest violent lurch in a 45 million-year-old collision. The great plate of the Earth's crust that carries the Indian subcontinent is slowly crunching into the plate that bears the bulk of Asia.
The geological collision created the Himalayas and their surrounding mountain ranges, the world's highest. And it has produced some of the world's most destructive earthquakes.
A 1935 earthquake near the plates' western edge, measured at 7.5 on the Richter scale, crushed the Pakistani city of Quetta, killing 60,000 people. In 1974, a 6.2-magnitude quake killed more than 5,000 in northern Pakistan.