80 Dead In Pakistan Landslides, Rain*

by Staff Writers
Muzaffarabad (AFP) Pakistan, March 22, 2007

Thirteen more people have died in landslides and accidents caused by
heavy rain in Pakistan, officials and residents said Thursday, bringing
the death toll from several days of bad weather to 80.

Six members of a family died and two were injured when they were hit by
an avalanche in the mountainous Dir district of North West Frontier
Province on Wednesday, local residents told AFP by telephone.

Separately the roof of a religious seminary at Karak town in the same
province collapsed on Wednesday, killing two female students and
injuring another eight, local police official Khurshid Bungash said.

Another three people were reported killed in roof collapses in other
towns in the hilly province bordering Afghanistan during the last 24
hours, officials said.

Further mudslides were reported in Pakistani Kashmir, where 37 survivors
of the devastating 2005 earthquake, mostly women, were killed in two
separate landslips on Tuesday.

Two more women were killed on Wednesday when a landslide swept away a
house at Moyian Saydan village in Kashmir's Jhelum valley, police said.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake in October 2005 killed more than 73,000
people and left 3.3 million homeless. More than 1,000 people also died
in Indian Kashmir.

Local authorities evacuated dozens of Kashmiris whose homes were damaged
by the rain to safer areas in the Himalayan region, where thousands of
people are still living in tents after the earthquake.

Source: Agence France-Presse