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TechnoratiIn the village of Sohi, a reporter for AP Television News saw the bodies of 17 people killed in one collapsed house and 12 from another. Distraught residents were digging a mass grave.
"We can't dig separate graves for each of them, as the number of deaths is high and still people are searching in the rubble" of many other homes, said Shamsullah Khan, a village elder.
Hospitals were flooded with dead and injured. One patient at Quetta Civil Hospital, Raz Mohammed, said he was awakened by the sound of his children crying before he felt a jolt.
"I rushed toward them but the roof of my own room collapsed and the main iron support hit me," he said. "That thing broke my back and I am in severe pain, but thank God my children and relatives are safe."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his country was offering $310,000 in immediate aid, but the head of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority said an international relief effort was not needed.
"God has been kind, it has been a localized affair," said Farooq Ahmad Khan. "I think we can manage it."
Pakistan is prone to seismic upheavals since it sits atop an area of collision between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, the same force responsible for the birth of the Himalayan mountains. Baluchistan's capital, Quetta, was devastated by a 7.5-magnitude temblor in 1935 that killed more than 30,000 people.
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Associated Press writer Ashraf Khan in Wam, Mattiullah Achakzai in Quetta and APTN cameraman Abdul Rahman in Sohi contributed to this report.
