Armenians face up to scenes of total devastation Moscow THE cataclysm that struck Armenia on 7 December claims as of 12 December 40,000 to 45,000 lives and tens of thousands wounded. Over half a million people have lost their homes. The town of Spitak with a population of 20,000, at the epicentre of the worst earthquake in Armenia in the past thousand years, was levelled. Eighty per cent of the homes and industrial structures were reduced to rubble in Leninakan, Armenia's second largest city (population: 290,000), and half of all structures in Kirovakan (population: 170,000). The earthquake hit an area with a population of more than 700,000, toppling buildings and severing power, gas, telephone and other communication lines. These are preliminary estimates of the Armenian calamity. President Mikhail Gorbachev cut short his visit in New York, postponed planned visits to Cuba and Britain and arrived in Armenia to take charge of the situation. Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov has been in Yerevan right from the start, coordinating the rescue and salvage operations as head of a special CPSU (Soviet Communist Party) Politburo commission. Other members of the commission working in Yerevan, the capital of C-'I GEORGIA Area affected by last week's earthquake.

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