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100,000 may have died
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INDIA'S defence minister said yesterday the death toll from the country's worst earthquake could be as high as 100,000 and the number of injured may be double that, as the search for survivors entered its fifth day.
Defence Minister George Fernandes, who had visited the worst affected areas in the west state of Gujarat, which was hit on Friday by a devastating earthquake measuring 7.9 degrees on the Richter scale, told the press in New Delhi, “If my worst fears come true, the death toll could be in six figures."
Homeless people in shattered towns and villages across Gujarat spent a fourth night in the open, some beside white bundles containing bodies awaiting cremation.
Others waited to ensure a proper cremation for dead loved ones still trapped beneath the rubble.
The old city of Bhuj, which has a population of 150,000, had been totally ravaged and “we do not know how many people are lying under the debris", the minister said.
Anjar, the second most populous town with a population of 80,000 was also under debris except for some new buildings which were outside the township.
Fernandes said that the commercial city of Ahmedabad was also in a bad shape where bodies were still trapped in many buildings.
While rehabilitation of the people affected by the quake would take a long time, the immediate need now was tents to provide shelter to the homeless, he said.
The minister told the press that another important thing was that all these people had been deprived of their belongings except the clothes they were wearing at the time of quake.
The earthquake may have caused a loss of up to 250 billion rupees (US$5.4 billion) by way of damage to property and industry, apart from a daily production loss of five billion rupees, according to India's chambers of trade and industry.
A team of nine Chinese earthquake experts were scheduled to fly to India yesterday to help monitor and analyze the trend of aftershocks of the devastative quake.
The Chinese Government has decided to offer India humanitarian aid worth five million yuan (US$600,000).
The devastating earthquake in Gujarat has created alarm in the northeast state of Assam, which falls in one of the highest seismic zones of the country.
Renowned environmental scientist S K Sarmah predicted that an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 8 on the Richter scale was possible in Assam at any time before 2010.(SD-Xinhua)
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