'125,000 missing in quake zone'
The Indian earthquake disaster could have killed up to 30,000 people in just one city and there are about 125,000 people unaccounted for throughout the region, officials said tonight.
More than 6,000 people have been confirmed dead and the number injured stands at 14,500, but death and injury figures are likely to rise much higher.
K N Mahure, a fire brigade commander in charge of rescue efforts in Bhuj - the hardest hit area in the western state of Gujarat - says: "There may be 20,000 to 30,000 dead in Bhuj alone."
He says he is basing his estimate on the number of people reported missing and the number found dead after three days of searching. "But we are finding people alive," he adds.
Gujarat Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel says about 125,000 people were "not accounted for" . He says many of them could be buried under the rubble, while others may have left the state.
Haren Pandya, Gujarat's home minister, says 6,072 people have been confirmed to have died in Friday's quake and gives a more cautious prediction of "at least 10,000 dead", adding that more than 14,500 people have been injured.
As frantic rescue efforts continued today, soldiers digging through the ruins of crushed buildings pursued the faint voices of survivors buried alive beneath tonnes of rubble.
A three-year-old girl was pulled alive from rubble in Anjar, 30 miles south-east of Bhuj, where 400 children were buried under toppling buildings as they marched in a holiday parade. A soldier who helped rescue her said: "She was chanting some Arabic verses. She was totally unscathed."
Nearby, rescuers spent five hours chipping at stones until they freed a 50-year-old man known only as Maganbhai. He was given sips of water as the workers pounded away at the rubble trapping his legs until they freed him.
In Bhuj, air force troops and police followed the sounds of a baby's cry until they made eye contact with her and her mother. Hours later, 18-month-old Namrata was pulled out alive and rushed to an air force hospital, but her mother Naina Badrasen Aur died before rescuers could reach her.
