Bodies recovered almost 5 years after quake

NATURAL CALAMITY: Areas hit by the 2005 earthquake are still being rehabilitated. PHOTO: FILE

MUZAFFARABAD: Police and rescue workers Sunday recovered seven bodies believed to be of the victims of October 8, 2005 earthquake.

The bodies were found at Kaamsar village, five kilometres northwest of Muzaffarabad.

“We have recovered seven dead bodies from the rubble. These people were trapped by the earthquake while travelling in a car,” senior police official Musa Khan told AFP.

In January this year, the police had recovered 16 dead bodies from a passenger coach which had also been buried under rubble by the earthquake.

Khan said that the bodies discovered on Sunday were beyond recognition but people were able to identify their loved ones from national identity cards and personal belongings.

The 7.6-magnitude quake killed more than 73,000 people and left around 3.5 million homeless, mainly in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2^nd, 2010.