One Chinese worker was killed and four others
injured in Pakistan during the devastating earthquake that struck
parts of South Asia on Saturday, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad
was quoted as saying in today's People's Daily.
Huang Bingkun, the dead man, was in his thirties
and a surveying engineer from south China's Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region. He was on the construction site of a
hydropower project in Allai Khwar when the earthquake occurred, the
embassy told People's Daily. His remains were found at
around 6 PM yesterday.
The other four injured Chinese were working for a
hydro project in a tunnel in the city of Besham at the time of the
earthquake and one of them is still in coma, an embassy official
told Xinhua News Agency.
"This disaster is by far the biggest in magnitude
and scale we have witnessed in Pakistan's history," Major General
Shaukat Sultan, spokesperson for the country's army, told reporters
on Sunday.
Over 18,000 people have been killed and more than
41,000 people wounded in Pakistan in Saturday's quake and the death
toll appears set to rise significantly, Sultan said.
He said there are many areas that so far have not
been reached, and the number killed could be much higher as more
dead bodies could be discovered under the rubble.
The quake, which measured at least 7.6 on the
Richter scale, struck parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan
early on Saturday.
(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2005)