Fresh tremors jolt northern areas; relief camp set up

16 Feb, 2004

Fresh tremors jolted northern Pakistan on Sunday as the death toll rose to 22 from twin earthquakes that struck the remote mountainous region at the weekend.
An official of the meteorological department said three aftershocks registering up to 4.3 on the open-ended Richter scale had been recorded in the north-western city of Peshawar. Police said there were no reports of casualties or damage from the latest jolts.
Pakistan Television said 22 people were killed and scores injured when two earthquakes registering 5.7 and 5.5 on the Richter scale hit the region on Saturday.
Officials said around 100 houses collapsed while another 900 were damaged, rendering hundreds of people homeless in Mansehra district.
"Many people are camping out under open sky fearing more tremors can hit the region," Hasan Zada Khan, a local official in Mansehra said.
The NWFP government has set up a relief camp for monitoring rescue and relief operation in areas affected by the earthquake, which struck the NWFP and other parts of the country on Saturday afternoon.
The earthquake killed at least 16 persons and destroyed a number of houses in Manshera and Battagram districts of the province.
An official of the Provincial Relief Commission informed that the district governments of the affected areas have been directed to make arrangements for provision of food to the displaced people.
Similarly, he added, the Federal Relief Commission has dispatched 200 tents and blankets for those people whose houses have been demolished.
"The number of deaths so far confirmed is 16," he said, adding, "one boy is missing."
Four persons died due to a house collapse while 12 died when a rock, displaced due to quake, hit a Datsun pick-up in Allai area.
In Mansehra, six people were killed and hundreds of houses were damaged by the tremors.

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