Monday, October 10 2005 13:05 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Srinagar: On day three of its 'Operation Imdad' or help, army today (Oct 10, 2005) deployed scores of bulldozers to clear roads and tracks littered with quake debris to reach out to remote areas while its choppers ferried medicines, tents and rations and evacuated the injured even as the temblor toll mounted to 755.

The men in olive green were making all out efforts to reach out to the remote villages of Tangdhar, Keran and Karnah in Kupwara district and Uri in Baramulla, which bore the brunt of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake two days ago.

According to information reaching the Police Control Room in the state capital, the death count reached 755 with Baramulla and Kupwara districts in north Kashmir alone accounting for 469 and 259 deaths.

Mobile medical teams with tons of medicine, dry ration and tents have been despatched to remote areas to provide succour to people in unreached areas, a defence spokesman said adding that thousands of more tents had also been rushed to Uri and Tangdhar.

Army choppers continued to undertake sorties carrying relief equipment to the quake devastated areas and ferrying the injured from far flung villages to the make-shift hospital in Uri as also to the army base hospital and the Bones and Joints civil hospital in Srinagar. Reports of more casualties poured into the police control room here as the full picture of the misery unfolded, as six persons died in Srinagar and one death was reported from Budgam district, police said.

In Jammu, the toll touched 20 last evening with the recovery of three bodies in border district of Poonch. Of them 13 people died in Poonch, four in Udhampur, two in Doda and one in Jammu. Meanwhile, Kashmiris spent another restless night outside their houses last night amidst rumour that a powerful earthquake was to strike around midnight.

Although officials and police repeatedly denied the rumour, shell-shocked people of the valley refused to go indoors as the earth trembled beneath them under the impact of mild after shocks last night.