19 October 2005: Earthquake in Kashmir, activists meet and organise

From: Edward Crawford: the following may give people a sort of smell of the situation chaos etc. The Struggle group have suffered appallingly, 5 dead, a whole number injured and 67 missing. Let us hope most of the latter turn up.

The following report was posted on the www.marxist.com site on Monday and gives up to date information on what is happening in Pakistan and the latest activities of the PTUDC there. The credit card donations have now soared past the £2000 total with many cash and cheque donations also coming through. This has been a tremendous dispay of support which has not gone unnoticed by workers in the affected areas - on behalf of them, I again thank you.

Earthquake Update: Eyewitness report from Kashmir
By Hina Zain, PTUDC Lahore
Monday, 17 October 2005

On Saturday October 15 a meeting of the PTUDC and YFIS was held in Kashmir's devastated city of Rawalakot. One hundred and twelve people, mainly Kashmiri youth attended the meeting. There was hardly anyone present who was not personally affected by the devastation of this calamity. Nealry everyone's house or dwelling was either totally destroyed or badly damaged. Five comrades have been confirmed dead. They were all young aged between 15 and 20 years. The names of the comrades who perished are comrade Attique and Khurshid from Muzzaferabad and Tasawar, Masroor and Rizwan from Bagh. Two female comrades and several male comrades were severely injured. Comrade Mishaal, who was one of the leading female comrades in Kashmir, had both of her legs broken. Just a few weeks ago she had given a fiery revolutionary speech at the mammoth rally of the JKNSF (Marxist) in Hajira, Kashmir. 

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