One Chinese worker was killed and four others injured in Pakistan during the devastating earthquake that struck parts of South Asia on Saturday, the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad was quoted as saying in today's People's Daily.

Huang Bingkun, the dead man, was in his thirties and a surveying engineer from south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. He was on the construction site of a hydropower project in Allai Khwar when the earthquake occurred, the embassy told People's Daily. His remains were found at around 6 PM yesterday.

The other four injured Chinese were working for a hydro project in a tunnel in the city of Besham at the time of the earthquake and one of them is still in coma, an embassy official told Xinhua News Agency.

"This disaster is by far the biggest in magnitude and scale we have witnessed in Pakistan's history," Major General Shaukat Sultan, spokesperson for the country's army, told reporters on Sunday.

Over 18,000 people have been killed and more than 41,000 people wounded in Pakistan in Saturday's quake and the death toll appears set to rise significantly, Sultan said.

He said there are many areas that so far have not been reached, and the number killed could be much higher as more dead bodies could be discovered under the rubble.

The quake, which measured at least 7.6 on the Richter scale, struck parts of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan early on Saturday.

(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2005)