Overwhelmed at Quake's Ground Zero

At Least 10,000 Estimated Dead in Capital of Pakistani-Controlled Kashmir

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 10 -- The earthquake that ripped through this once-picturesque town Saturday did more than topple houses and send hillsides tumbling onto the streets. It also destroyed the main government hospital, so the injured were taken to a soccer stadium instead.

On Monday afternoon, many of them were still there.

"Please help me," said Mansour Mir, 48, a government auditor whose wife, Naveed, writhed in agony and called on Allah as she lay on a cot with her broken leg wrapped in dirty gauze. "She didn't cry for the last three days, but now she is not able to control the pain," he said.

A handful of army doctors were on the scene, and every now and then a helicopter would land, blowing down tents and kicking up a storm of debris before clattering off with a load of 15 or so victims. But that left Mir's wife and several hundred others still waiting their turn for evacuation at the stadium, where bloodstained bandages littered the ground and a shrouded corpse lay on a salvaged bed frame.

The scene at the improvised trauma center embodied the frantic and under-equipped rescue effort unfolding here in the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Muzaffarabad is apparently the most grievously affected town of any in the earthquake zone, in both human and material terms.

Local officials estimated that the earthquake killed at least 10,000 people in Muzaffarabad, out of a total estimated death toll of more than 20,000, mostly in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. The 7.6-magnitude temblor appears to have destroyed or damaged most buildings in the relatively prosperous community of about 125,000, knocking down schools and minarets, leaving cars crushed like soda cans and turning the main shopping bazaar into a maze of rubble and spilled goods.

Government institutions were paralyzed, and there were reports of looting by survivors desperate for food and water. The elected official in charge of the region was reported to be living in a tent outside his damaged official residence.

Muzaffarabad was largely cut off from the outside world until Monday morning, when relief workers finally reopened the main access road, which had been blocked by landslides. By afternoon, relief efforts were just getting underway.

Although there were plenty of soldiers in evidence, many appeared to have little to do but direct traffic. International aid agencies had only just begun arriving.

In the absence of significant outside help and heavy equipment, townspeople and soldiers picked at the ruins with shovels. The stench of decomposing bodies filled the air. Four men walked down a street carrying a child's body on a bed frame. There was no power or running water.

Many residents camped outside their homes, either because the buildings were uninhabitable or because they feared that the ground was not yet stable. Several landslides around the town on Monday afternoon sent up plumes of dust visible for miles.

"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst-affected areas," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief military spokesman, told Agence France-Presse. "Rescuers are pulling out dead children in Muzaffarabad, but there is no one to claim the bodies, which shows their parents are dead."