Pakistan deploys military helicopters as quake toll reaches 300

Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed said that the death toll in Pakistan had reached 230.

Rasheed said that most deaths in Pakistan were reported from the mountainous region of Malakand in the north near the Afghan border.

He said that military and civilian agencies in Pakistan had mounted massive rescue operation to reach people in areas still inaccessible due to landslides triggered by the tremor.

But their efforts were hampered by more landslides and heavy rains overnight.

According a report, nearly 80 people were also killed in eastern Afghanistan in the 7.5-magnitude earthquake that jolted a vast region from Tajikistan to New Delhi in India.

In the same vein, Indian officials said at least four people were killed in the Himalayan valleys of Indian near country’s border with China and Pakistan.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday ordered the military to fly MI 17 helicopters to the inaccessible areas as more than 2,000 injured people were being treated at hospitals in the north-western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Sharif’s spokesman said that nearly 2,500 houses have been damaged in the province alone, adding the tribal regions near the Afghan border were also hit hard.

Most of the affected people in the north western town of Dir spent the chilly night in the open, waiting for help to arrive.

“Our houses are destroyed, we are with children and without shelter. Somebody should come and help us,’’ Zaman Khan, from Chakdara village said.

Meanwhile, Mawlawi Hamidullah, Provincial Council member from Badakhshan province in Afghanistan, says that authorities are also struggling to reach survivors in the