Road worker claws his way out of quake-buried truck

The killer earthquake inundated the truck and its 64 passengers in a mountain of debris along a lonely stretch of road near the India-Pakistan frontier.

"The mountain fell on us. It completely buried the truck and everything around it ... All I could see was the darkness of a grave," said Shaikh, a 25-year-old mason, recovering in hospital from his dramatic ordeal.

The accident killed 60 people all workers heading for maintenance of the bridge that straddles the frontier between India and Pakistan.

"We suddenly heard a loud rumbling noise. Before we could make out what was happening, we were buried," said Shaikh, wrapped in a tattered hospital blanket. His anxious mother sat by his side, offering him water.

Lying in the trauma ward of a Srinagar hospital, Shaikh suffered severe leg wounds and broken ribs.

He and his fellow workers were hired by the Indian army to lay roads in frontier regions. They boarded the military truck in Shaikh's hometown of Uri, 100km north of Srinagar.

Less than an hour later, the earth shook and boulders and dirt engulfed the vehicle, a few kilometres short of the bridge.

As boulders rained down on the truck, Shaikh and some of the workers jumped out and hid under the carriage. The others were too stunned to react.

"I couldn't breathe after a while and there was no way of getting out," Shaikh said. "Everything was dark and covered by dirt, rock and debris."

When it became unbearable, he screamed: "Do something!" He heard others moan, realising that at least a few of his co-workers were still alive.

"That gave me courage. I began to dig at the dirt with my hand," he said. Others joined him. "We tried pushing the debris toward the ridge on the side of the road. We used our hands furiously," he said.

Gradually they managed to create a small hole which let the air in.

In Pakistan's Northwest Frontier, a doctor told Pakistan's GEO television and the BBC that his team had pulled an 18-month-old girl unconscious but alive from under the door of her collapsed house, which had protected her.

Her mother and two brothers were found dead nearby, but her father survived.

Meanwhile, the UAE Armed Forces' field hospital continued to provide treatment to the injured people in the Pakistani city of Balakot.