Quake-hit villages still wait for aid
Poor roads and other lacking infrastructure have hampered relief efforts.
AWARAN (Dunya News) - Vital relief aid has still not reached several remote, earthquake stricken regions of Balochistan for the fifth consecutive day.
The affectees of several regions including Malar, Khuzdar, Turbat and Kashkor are still waiting for aid as no team of doctors and rescue have reached these places.
Authorities say the magnitude-7.7 quake that hit southwestern Baluchistan on Tuesday has so far claimed 700 dead and 765 injured. The province, Pakistan's poorest, is also a conflict zone where separatists and government troops have been fighting for years.
In Dalbadi, where almost all of the village's 350 homes were destroyed, residents said only private aid had arrived as of Friday.
"Nobody from the government or the district administration or representatives in the assembly came to help us or at least visit us," said Mansoor Ahmed, who had rushed home from the eastern city of Lahore to help his family.
So far, he added, only a truckload of supplies from relatives in the port city of Karachi had arrived. Aid groups have also sent help to the stricken area. While several doctors arrived earlier this week, with medicine in such short supply they could do little more than comfort the victims.
Jameel Ahmed Qambrani, who lost six relatives including a daughter in the quake, recounted horrific scenes after his house partially collapsed.
"It was like hell in our home. Children were buried under the roofs," he said, adding that it took him seven hours to recover his daughter's body from the rubble.
Poor roads and other lacking infrastructure have hampered relief efforts, and aid operations have become ensnared in the conflict between the army and separatists, who seek an independent state for the Baluch people.
