Asian quake death toll estimated at 30,000

(Video) An estimated 30,000 people were killed in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir by a massive earthquake, the region's Minister for Works and Communications Tariq Farooq has told AFP.

"Our rough estimates say more than 30,000 people have died in the earthquake in Kashmir," he said on Sunday.

Pakistan's military said earlier that at least 18,000 died in the 7.6 magnitude quake on Saturday.

Rescue efforts (Video: Reuters)

The casualty toll from the tremor rose sharply Sunday as rescuers struggled to dig people from wreckage, their work made more difficult as rain and hail turned dirt and debris into sticky muck. Earlier Major-General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's chief army spokesman said that more than 18,000 had been killed – 17,000 of them in Pakistani Kashmir, where the quake was centered. Some 41,000 people were injured, he said.

"The death toll is gradually rising," Sultan told The Associated Press. He said authorities had counted the bodies.

A few Israeli humanitarian aid organizations that belong to IsraAid, the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid, are currently preparing to launch a relief operation in the area hit by the quake.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6 was centred in the forest-clad mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, near the Indian border, about 95 km (60 miles) northeast of Islamabad.

The first quake was followed by a series of four aftershocks of magnitudes between 5.4 and 5.9. They were felt across the subcontinent and shook buildings in the Afghan, Indian and Bangladeshi capitals, Kabul, New Delhi and Dhaka.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told ARY One television he had reports that several villages had been entirely wiped out. More than 100 people were killed in one district of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province alone, police said.

Damage was also heavy in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, residents said. According to Sultan, 50 percent of buildings had either collapsed or been damaged in the capital.

Mass destruction in Pakistan (Reuters)

A military hospital in Rawalakot in Kashmir had also been damaged and there were some some casualties among army personnel, he added.

Geo TV said 25 people had been killed in Pakistani Kashmir and about 30 in the Hazara area of North West Frontier Province. Scores of people were feared killed or trapped in two 12-storey apartment blocks reduced to rubble in Islamabad. 

Reuters correspondents saw the bodies of at least three people being pulled out, as well as six injured people pulled from the debris. Residents struggled to shift heavy concrete with their bare hands. Officials told Reuters the two blocks had contained 75 apartments.