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Quake survivors baton-charged

MUZAFFARABAD: The police baton-charged around 250 earthquake survivors in Pakistani Kashmir who were protesting against orders to vacate a squalid makeshift camp on Friday, the police chief said.

A number of the demonstrators were arrested as they marched through the centre of the regional capital Muzaffarabad, said Shahid Hassan, Azad Kashmir police chief.

“They were ordered to leave the temporary camp because it was set up in the middle of the city and it did not have any proper sanitation or waste disposal facilities,” Hassan said.

Pakistan’s President Musharraf visited the camp at Jalalabad Park, close to the banks of the River Neelum, one week ago when he came to Muzaffarabad for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

The protest comes as aid officials struggle to contain an outbreak of acute diarrhoea at Muzaffarabad’s main tent camp — in the sports ground of the city’s university — and a number of other spontaneous settlements. “We were shifting them to a proper camp with better living conditions but they did not agree,” police chief Hassan added. “Around 250 people protested, and police, in order to disperse them, used a mild baton charge. They arrested a few people and dispersed the rest of the crowd,” he added.

They were stopped because they were heading towards a “sensitive area” where a US military hospital for quake victims was located, said Tahir Qureshi, the deputy police chief.

“They were blocking traffic and they were told many times to behave, then the police officers had to resort to a baton charge to disperse them,” Qureshi added. “The camp where they are living has no sanitary facilities, no latrines and there was a danger of disease.”

Local authorities had imposed an order banning gatherings of more than five people to stop further trouble at the camp, where around 350 tents have sprung up. afp

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