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October 11, 2005
Pakistan: Kashmir Islamists Assist in Earthquake Rescue
Kashmiri Islamists yesterday helped in attempts to save youngsters trapped inside the wreckage of a girls' school that collapsed on top of them, according to today's Telegraph.
The Pakistani-controlled region is normally associated with acts of of atrocity carried out by these fighters, but when the Government Girls High School collapsed in Garhi Habibullah, two of the fighters showed their humanity in assisting the efforts to retrieve trapped victims. More than 100 girls two teachers and an administrator died in the wreckage on Saturday morning. The remote valley location of Garhi Habibiullah, 15 miles from the city of Balakot, meant that government help was slow in arriving.
Yesterday the government managed to provide heavy lifting equipment, and the two mujahideen crawled into a hole to look for pupils who may still have been alive. The men only retrieved one dead girl and bloodstained schoolbags, but on Saturday they had successfully freed dozens of trapped children.
"The death toll would have been much more had these Kashmiri mujahideen not arrived and started the rescue operation," said Babar Hussain, whose sister, Saima Irum, 30, was a teacher at the school and died when it collapsed. "They are daredevils and they saved our girls without caring for their own lives."The situation for survivors of the earthquake is dire, with winter approaching and people now having little access to clean water.
Disasters bring out the best and the worst in people. While on a positive theme, a despatch from the Calcutta Telegraph details how in Tangdhar, on the disputed Pakistan/Indian border, a part was played by an Indian soldier in the rescue of a Pakistani soldier who had slid down a hillside, unnoticed by his fellow Pakistani comrades. Abdur Rouf, from the Indian Army's 12 Field Regiment from Basihirat shouted to the man's fellow soldiers, promising that his regiment would not shoot. The Pakistani soldier was saved.
These are small details, and in the grand scheme of things maybe they are small and futile actions, but while the news from the disaster-struck area is so unbearably tragic, they are timely reminders that we all are human, we are all vulnerable, and compassion is a quality that redeems.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 11, 2005 4:39 PM
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