Chance rescue: Villagers get help after blocking church workers' van

Published: 2005-10-11

URI, India (CNS) -- The Catholic relief workers from St. Joseph Hospital reached the distraught families in Jabala village by sheer chance. The half dozen workers from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India and Caritas were shocked when their van was blocked by a group of irate villagers on the earthquake-damaged road between Uri and Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, Oct. 10. "If you are genuinely serious about relief work, why don't you visit our village?" Mohammed Habibullah asked angrily as the church relief workers got out of their van amid baton-wielding villagers. An hour later, after hiking rocky pathways on a steep mountain slope in pitch darkness, villager Mohammed Bain was thanking the relief workers. "We had lost all hope and never thought anyone would come reach us. God will bless you," he said. Jabala, elevation 8,200 feet, was one of scores of villages badly damaged in the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that hit Pakistan, India and Afghanistan Oct. 8. By Oct. 11, officials said more than 1,300 people had died in India, and the death toll in Pakistan was expected to surpass 35,000.

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