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Deadly quake hits China, 400 killed
Kyrgyzstan likely to split Michelle Obama pays surprise visit to Haiti |
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Deadly quake hits China, 400 killed
The quake sent people fleeing from their homes as houses of mud and wood crumbled under the shock. The main quake was followed by a number of aftershocks in the Qinghai Tibetan plateau. The Chinese earthquake authorities said phone lines to the devastated areas were down, hindering rescue efforts and workers were trying to release water from a reservoir where cracks had formed. In Jiegu township, which was near the quake epicenter, more than 85 per cent of the houses were reported to have been collapsed and cracks appeared in the buildings still standing. The officials fear the death toll might go up as hundreds of people are still buried under the debris. Indian embassy in Beijing said they had not received reports of any casualty of Indian nationals. Paramilitary and rescue workers were working with t their hands to remove the rubble to save the people buried under it. TV footage said all access roads to the region had been damaged and even the airport cut off. The Chinese official said the toll could go up as the houses in the remote area are mostly made of mud and almost all of them collapsed in the quake. This quake comes less than two years after a magnitude 7.9 quake hit the neighbouring Sichuan province which left 90,000 people dead. Many people are still buried under the debris of collapsed houses in the Gyegu Town near the epicentre in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu in southern Qinghai, said Huang Limin, deputy secretary-general of the prefecture government. The strong quake had a string of aftershocks, with the biggest one measuring 6.3 magnitude, have toppled houses, temples, gas stations and electric poles, triggered landslides, damaged roads, cut power supplies and disrupted telecommunications, official Xnhua reported. Gyegu, also known as Jiegu, is the seat of the Yushu prefecture government. The town has a population of about 1,00,000, including permanent residents and migrant people. About 700 soldiers are now struggling to clear away the rubble and rescue the buried people, a spokesman with the Qinghai Provincial Emergency Office said. More than 5,000 additional rescuers, including soldiers and medical workers, have been dispatched to the quake-hit region, according to the Qinghai provincial government. “Our top priority is to save students. Schools are always places that have many people,” said Kang Zifu, an army officer in the rescue operation in Gyegu. “The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers,” he said. The epicentre of the quake is at the Rima Village in the Shanglaxiu Township, about 50 km west of Gyegu and about 800 km away from Xining, the Qinghai provincial
capital. — PTI
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Kyrgyzstan likely to split Russia to give $50-m
aid Moscow: Russia will provide $50 million in grants and loans to Kyrgyzstan, finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Wednesday Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the amount of aid granted to Kyrgyzstan could be increased if needed.
Moscow, April 14 In his first comments on Kyrgyz developments, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blamed Bakiyev’s government for failing to prevent the unrest and said the risk of a civil war in the Central Asian country is high. “The risk of Kyrgyzstan splitting into two parts - North and South - really exists... Kyrgyzstan is on the threshold of a civil war, and the forces in Kyrgyzstan should be aware of their responsibility,” Medvedev said in Washington, according to Russian media. He said that if a civil war sparked off in the former Soviet republic bordering China in the East, terrorists and extremists of every kind will rush into that region. “It is during such conflicts that a favourable ground for radicals and extremists is created, and then instead of Kyrgyzstan we get a second Afghanistan,” Medvedev warned addressing ‘Brookings’ think tank. His warning came as the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of deposed Bakiyev’s request for political asylum in Russia. “We don’t have such information. We have not received such request,” a Foreign Ministry source was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS. Earlier, the US embassy in Bishkek had also denied any plans to grant political asylum to Bakiyev, who after fleeing the capital on April 7 in the wake of bloody riots and had taken refuge in his native village Tyeit in Jalal-Abad region.In Bishkek, interim Prime Minister Roza Otunbayeva rejected Bakiyev’s offer to step down, saying, “The people and the nation will not permit this. He should be put on trial in the court” for the bloodshed during the recent protests against his regime. — PTI
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Michelle Obama pays surprise visit to Haiti
Port-Au-Prince, April 14 "It's powerful. The devastation is definitely powerful," Obama, said as she stopped in Haiti on her way to Mexico on her first solo trip since her husband, Barack Obama, became the US President in January 2009. Jill Biden, wife of US Vice-President Joe Biden, accompanied her the White House said
in a statement. After overflying the ravaged Port-au-Prince in a US Army helicopter yesterday, the two women landed in the grounds of the National Palace, where Haitian President Rene Preval and First Lady Elisabeth Preval greeted them. Scores of the US military staff and the Haitian police have been deployed around the presidential palace, which for generations has been a postcard
symbol of Haiti, and now sits in ruins. They then visited a child care facility, where dozens of children sang as a smiling US first lady danced with them.
— AFP
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Beijing, April 14
