After grief, comes anger as J-K counts its dead

New Delhi: It?s been three days since the deathquake. And Jammu and Kashmir is still counting its dead.

The casualty figure in the state on Tuesday mounted to 947 with the worst-hit Baramulla district alone accounting for 619 fatalities.

The massive quake injured 4,000 people and damaged 30,000 houses in the state, an official spokesman said here.

As the rescue workers dig out bodies from under the debris and flow in the provisions, there?s a certain sense of desperation among the survivors.

LITTLE RESPITE, MUCH ANGER

Grief has given way to anger and fury as relief and provisions trickle in at snail?s pace.

With mounting casualties, a battle for the relief supplies has ensued.

As the IAF chopper carrying the provisions, medicines and blankets landed in Tagdhar, survivors mobbed the soldiers and ran behind the chopper pleading for food and water .

The anxious crowd, many who had trekked hours to reach the base camp from the region's upper reaches and have been without food for nearly 48 hours.

A limbless child, a maimed women and a bleeding old villager almost every injured turned up at the Army's helipad in Tangdhar to be flown down to Srinagar for treatment.

More choppers will wing their way into now accessible Teetwal, Treda, Seemari - the last villages on this side of Line of Control - to ferry the wounded and pound medicine and food packets.

Several villages in the frontier Tangdhar and Uri are still inaccessible even as army and state government have expedited relief and rescue operation in these areas.

Lt Col G S Bindra of Army Aviation Unit, ?Since the calamity hit the area, we have been evacuating hundreds of villagers. We pressed six choppers on day one ...''

Tangdhar has borne the maximum brunt of Saturday's tremors. More than 350 people have died and 800 others injured in this bowl-shaped sector since the killer earthquake devastated scores of villages.

ARMY UNDETERRED

Ringed by mountains guarded by Indian soldiers, Tangdhar also saw death of 30 soldiers. Twelve of them have gone missing, after falling off from a cliff.

A soldier who had fallen on the other side of LoC but escaped death, was returned safely by the Pakistani troops.

Undeterred and braving the loss in their camp, the troops, however, continue with their relief and rescue missions.

Says S Thiaraya, Brigade Commander of Tangdhar, ?We have despatched medical camps in villages and got X-ray machines for the treatment of the people...''

Despite the good work done by the army, reports of more villages having being flattened by nature's fury are trickling in.

(with inputs from PTI)