- (AFP) -- An earthquake in Pakistan's remote mountainous
north killed 20 people, a spokesman from the interior ministry said.
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- "Twenty peoples have died and scores of others are
injured, but we don't have any exact details," interior ministry spokesman
Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP.
-
- Minister for Northern Areas Nisar Memon told AFP that
the quake had hit at about 2:30 am (2130 GMT Wednesday) and measured 5.6
points on the Richter scale.
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- The earthquake occurred in the Karakoram mountain range,
in the same vicinity as a series of quakes that killed 12 people earlier
this month, he said.
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- Those quakes -- the largest of which measured 5.3 on
the Richter scale -- occurred near Gilgit, a once-popular tourist gateway
to glaciers and the famed Nanga Parbat and Rakaposhi peaks. It lies 260
kilometers (160 miles) northeast of the capital, Islamabad.
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- The Karakoram highway, which links Pakistan to China
and is built along the ancient Silk Road caravan route, had been cut in
several places, Memon said.
-
- Rescue operations were under way, with the Pakistani
army helping, military spokesman Saulat Raza said, adding that few details
of the number of homes destroyed were available due to the remoteness of
the area.
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- Earth tremors and landslides are common in the Karakoram
range, where the Indian and Eurasian continental plates collide.
-
- In 1974 a devastating quake measuring six on the Richter
scale killed 5,300 people close to the town of Patan, some 150 kilometers
(93 miles) along the treacherous Karakoram Highway from Gilgit towards
Islamabad.
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- State media, citing unnamed police sources, reported
late Thursday that at least 23 people had been killed.
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- Most of the injured were from Astore, some 80 kilometres
(50 miles) west of Gilgit, the Associated Press of Pakistan said.
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