NEW DELHI / ISLAMABAD / KABUL, Oct. 08 .- An earthquake measuring at least 7.6 degrees on the Richter scale struck South Asia on Saturday morning, causing destruction and death in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. The Pakistani government fears more than 1,000 people have died from the earthquake that completely destroyed several villages in northern Iraq. In the Kashmir region of India at least 16 people killed while reporting in Afghanistan confirmed the death of a child crushed by a wall. Pakistani officials feared that dozens of people were trapped or dead under the rubble of two apartment blocks that collapsed in Islamabad. A photographer for Reuters news agency said he saw three bodies and drew six people alive from the rubble, as residents and rescue workers clambering over the ruins of buildings. "I can not say how many people are still down there and we are trying to evacuate. Some 75 apartments were affected (by shaking) so the number of people are in the hundreds," said Mohammad Ali, a government official in Islamabad. Another quake with a magnitude of 5.9 degrees was felt in Pakistan an hour later, causing more panic. The mud least 80 houses were damaged in the province of Nangarhar, in eastern Afghanistan. The website of the Network of U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude of the quake was 7.6 degrees and located the epicenter at a depth of 10 kilometers, 95 kilometers northeast of Islamabad and 125 kilometers northwest of Srinagar . Japanese experts said the magnitude was 7.8 degrees as measured by a technique similar to the Richter but adjusted for the geological features country. "We can say that was one of the strongest earthquakes recorded in Islamabad," said Mohammad Hanif, an official of the Pakistan Meteorological Department.
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