After the first disaster teams reached hard-hit Western and
Choiseul Provinces, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare said aerial
patrols had reported "massive and widespread" destruction from
Monday's magnitude 8.0 quake and tsunami.
Aerial pictures showed flattened homes and twisted iron roofs on
the ground all along the remote coastline as people wandered
seemingly aimlessly on roads clogged by debris and boats hurled
ashore by powerful waves up to 10 meters high.
The first priority of rescue teams, Sogavare said, would be to
restore communications with affected areas amid official estimates
that 22 people had been killed and 5,409 left homeless. The death
toll was expected to rise.
Australian aid agency Caritas said infection would set in
quickly among those injured, with antibiotics in short supply and
doctors currently tending to survivors at a hilltop aid station
near Gizo, the worst affected town.
With a state of emergency in force, a police patrol boat
carrying food and emergency supplies arrived in Gizo, where schools
and a hospital were damaged, and dozens of houses sucked into the
sea. At least 13 villages were feared destroyed.
The region around Gizo is popular with international tourists
and scuba divers for its corals. A New Zealand resident was among
the dead, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said.
Quake jolts Afghanistan
In another part of the world, a strong earthquake struck the
Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan Tuesday, with tremors felt
across Pakistan and India, but there were no immediate reports of
damage or casualties.
The earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck 260 km northeast of
Kabul, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and officials at
Pakistan's meteorological department said.
Authorities in Faizabad, the capital of Afghanistan's Badakhshan
province and the town nearest the epicenter, were trying to contact
outlying districts to assess damage and casualties, Deputy Governor
Shams-Urahman said.
(China Daily via agencies April 4, 2007)
