1,000 feared dead after Asia quake (ananova)

A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake has reduced villages to rubble in Pakistan and India, killing as many as 1,000 people.

Pakistan's army described the damage as widespread and said it included villages buried by quake-induced landslides.

At least 500 people died and 1,700 were injured in four quake-hit districts in north-western Pakistan, said Rifat Pasha, the provincial police chief.

He said the toll could rise because rescue teams were still working in areas that were hit hard by the temblor.

Pakistani army officials who flew over quake-hit areas reported seeing hundreds of flattened homes in villages north of the capital, Islamabad.

"It is a national tragedy," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the Pakistani army's chief spokesman, said. "This the worst earthquake in recent times."

Faisal Saleh Hayyat, Cabinet minister for Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, said hundreds of people had died in Kashmir, but he did not have an exact figure.

"Rescue work is still going on in Kashmir, and we are trying to provide immediate help to people in Muzaffarabad and other districts," he said. Muzaffarabad is the capital of the region.

At least 190 people died in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, said BB Vyas, a local government official. The dead included 20 soldiers who perished in landslides along the Line of Control that separates the Indian and Pakistani portions of Kashmir, said Col H Juneja, an army spokesman.