BALAKOT, Pakistan - Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands Sunday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake killed more than 30,000 people in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir alone.

Saturday’s magnitude-7.6 quake also struck India and Afghanistan, which reported hundreds dead.

“I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir,�?Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.

In Kashmir, the quake flattened dozens of villages and towns, crushing schools and mud-brick houses. The dead included 250 girls at a school razed to the ground and more than 200 Pakistani soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

Pakistan’s army called the earthquake the country’s worst-ever disaster and appealed for urgent help. Rival India, the United States, the United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany all offered assistance.

Desperate search through the debris
Near the ruins of the school, at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets of Balakot, a devastated village of about 30,000 just west of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where the earthquake struck shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday.