Rescue work on as quake toll jumps

Pakistan says 19,400 killed, Indian figure doubles to 558.

At least 258 people were killed in one town in Jammu and Kashmir, nearly doubling the Indian death toll from the devastating earthquake which hit South Asia.

"Information is now coming in from far off areas," one official said from the frontier Kupwara town. "We have recovered 258 bodies so far and 100 are wounded in Karnah town."

The deaths in Karnah took the overall death toll to 558 from 300 in India, where the Himalayan state bordering Pakistan has been worst hit, with many mud and stone houses buried under landslides.

Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake, which claimed at least 19,400 lives in Pakistan, was centred about 95 km (60 miles) northeast of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Rescuers continued to scour the rubble in frontier villages of Kashmir for survivors. "The search operations are on. Maybe there are more dead bodies under the debris," the top bureaucrat of Jammu and Kashmir state, Vijay Bakaya, told yeaterday.

The border areas of Uri, Kupwara and Baramulla in Kashmir were worst hit, with many houses buried under landslides and others developing cracks.

Uri, the last big town on the highway connecting the two sides of Kashmir, and its nearby areas accounted for about 130 deaths.

Army teams restored traffic on a key 300-km stretch of highway connecting Srinagar to the rest of the country after landslides blocked the road.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road was also being cleared of debris. The World Bank has offered $20 million to Pakistan to cope with the devastating earthquake, bank president Paul Wolfowitz said on Sunday.

Wolfowitz, who is on a visit to Tokyo, also urged international donors to coordinate efforts to help South Asian nations battered by the earthquake, rather than trying to compete over aid.

Many international donors have already offered rescue teams and aid to Pakistan.

The United States said, it would provide $100,000 in emergency aid funding to the country and was also offering US military helicopters. Japan, Britain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were among other countries dispatching immediate help, as the sudden official jump in the death toll on Sunday from less than 2,000 to more than 19,400 created a sense of urgency.