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Donors estimate quake death toll at 86,000

* Official toll unchanged at 73,276

ISLAMABAD: International donors estimate that last month’s devastating earthquake in Pakistan killed about 86,000 people, but the government has not changed its official death toll of 73,276.

“The assessment teams of international donors that went into earthquake-hit areas for the needs assessment have estimated the death toll around 86,000,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s adviser on finance, Salman Shah, told AFP.

“But this is not a confirmed death toll, it is based just on their assessments,” Shah said. “Let’s not confirm these figures,” he said adding that the confirmed death toll would be announced by the country’s Federal Relief Commissioner. Finance Ministry official Iqbal Ahmed Khan told AP also that the toll had jumped to 86,000 under a broad assessment by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, working with local governments and aid agencies. Khan said the new tally came after more bodies were pulled from debris and recovery teams reached areas previously blocked by landslides. “This is their assessment, which we think is fair enough,” Khan said. “They had various teams in the field. This is feedback from the field.”

UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt earlier said the death toll had reached 87,350, with nearly 100,000 injured, and the figures were provided by the Federal Relief Commission, Reuters reported. However, commission spokesman Col Baseer Malik said the death toll was unchanged at 73,276. He said this was likely to rise as more information came in from remote areas, but not dramatically.

The damage assessment report prepared by teams from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other donor agencies said the quake devastated a total of 7,197 schools in NWFP and Azad Kashmir, an official at one of the agencies told AFP. The earthquake also destroyed 3,837 kilometres of roads, the official said on condition of anonymity. The reconstruction cost estimated by the teams ranged between three and four billion dollars while Pakistan estimates 10-12 billion dollars, he said. agencies

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