Friday, October 07, 2005

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS, Birth pangs Begin

LUKE 21

HURRICANE STAN


"There are no words for this. I have only tears left," teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed, told the Reuters news agency.

"There were only houses here, for as far as you could see... It makes you lose hope," Mr Gonzalez said. "There are no children left, there are no people left."

In Quezaltenango, the second most important city, people are still trapped in what remains of their homes as flood waters have reached up to two metres (6ft) high, correspondents say.
Guatemalan President Oscar Berger has asked Congress to declare a state of emergency.
Mass evacuation In El Salvador, at least 65 people are known to have died. Officials said nearly 54,000 others had been evacuated to 370 shelters throughout the country, despite difficulties in travelling along many of the country's roads.
"The ground is saturated and we could have more tragedies," warned Salvadoran Red Cross spokesman Carlos Lopez Mendoza.



7.6 EARTHQUAKE PAKISTAN-INDIA-AFGHANISTAN

"This was the strongest earthquake in the area during the last hundred years," Qamar Uz Zaman, director-general of the Pakistani Meteorological Department, told CNN.
Although the final death toll will not be known until some of Pakistan's remote areas can be reached, "one can see from the widespread damage that it has caused, and the number of houses that have been damaged, that the number of dead or injured could be running into thousands," said Maj. Gen. Shauket Sultan, Pakistani army spokesman.
In addition, several northern villages may be demolished, officials warned. "This is really a very serious and very grave situation," said Anisa Zaib Tahir Khali, Pakistan's minister of state for information.
Frantic efforts to rescue survivors were underway in Islamabad, where an apartment building collapsed. Elsewhere in Pakistan, preliminary reports indicate "widespread damage," particularly in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and the country's northern area


http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/quake.pakistan/index.html

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