Many still without aid in quake zone

BATA MORA, Pakistan - Food and other relief aid flowed into more areas of northern Pakistan yesterday as rescue operations in the devastating Kashmir earthquake increasingly became a relief mission for those who survived.

But four days after the quake that local officials believe may have claimed as many as 40,000 lives, many of the worst affected had yet to see any aid, despite huge pledges from around the world.

"Our resources are very stretched -- every time we rush to one place we hear of another place that is worse," said army Colonel Y.P. Sayyaj in the mountain town of Bata Mora in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

"I know people are suffering but we have to prioritize. Everyone will get help in the end."

At the entrance to every small town and village driving up the mountain, entire populations waited in the hope of aid. At Bata Mora, about 250 km (155 miles) from Islamabad, a big crowd was waiting but no supplies had yet arrived.

The official toll from Saturday's quake remains at 23,000 dead and 51,000 injured in Pakistan, and 1,200 deaths on the Indian side of the border, called the Line of Control.

The United Nations has put the toll at least 30,000.

Quake victims and international relief officials in both countries have expressed frustration at the pace of relief work.

The arrival of the first aid in the town of Battagram, about 30 km from Bata Mora, on Tuesday, caused scuffles.

"The people are very angry over the late arrival of the aid," said a local journalist. "Many people were lying under open sky in hail and rain yesterday with no shelter. Today, the weather is clear and the army has promised to give 750 tents to us."

Across the border, a villager in the Indian hamlet of Pingla Haridal told a Reuters team: "The world has forgotten we exist. You are the first people here asking about us besides some soldiers who pulled out bodies on the first day."

Resources stretched

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake was the strongest to hit the region in a century and severely stretched the resources of the Pakistani army, which has headed the relief operation.

A senior U.N. official said the operation had improved with the arrival of more helicopters, including some U.S. military aircraft usually used in the war on militants in neighboring Afghanistan.

"But in the areas rescue teams have not yet been able to reach, hope basically is fading," he said.

Medical experts say an unhurt man can last three days without water and a woman four days, although in such disasters there are often extraordinary survival stories.

Authorities are now most concerned about the weather and the onset of winter, which usually comes in mid- to late-October.

Snow could be seen on tops of mountains from Battagram.

Relief flights had to be halted for two hours on Tuesday due to torrential rains and hailstorms that added to the misery on the ground where many people have been sleeping out in the open.

"Because of rain and the onset of cold weather, provision of shelter is our first priority," a senior military official involved in relief operations told Reuters on Wednesday.

"We are in short supply of blankets and plastic sheets. We also badly need shrouds to bury the dead."

In Muzaffarabad, a badly hit city of 70,000 people that is the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, six huge trucks and three large vans belonging to Pakistan's largest private trust, the Edhi Foundation, arrived laden with relief supplies on Wednesday.

But there were no reports of rescuers finding signs of life in the rubble and there was little evidence of attempts to retrieve any survivors.

The United Nations says as many as one million people have been made homeless by the disaster and emergency food supplies were needed for a similar number of people.

It has warned there is a risk of cholera and pneumonia and Muzaffarabad's health director Khawaja Shabir said malaria and other diseases were already breaking out there, with hospitals wrecked and many doctors dead.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of aid have been pledged from around the world and early on Wednesday, a plane load of relief supplies arrived from neighboring India, Pakistan's rival for control of the divided Kashmir region.

On Tuesday the United Nations launched an emergency appeal for $272 million to provide winterized tents, food, blankets, medicines, water purification equipment and to reconstruct some schools and hospitals.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has expressed confidence Pakistan will see the situation improve dramatically over the next days.

"They (helicopters) will fan out to villages outside the main cities so that the people receive relief there, in addition to the ground troops who are fanning out also, to go village to village and help out where needed," he said late on Tuesday.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a visit to neighboring Afghanistan, said she would fly to Pakistan later on Wednesday to show support for a military ally.

There was some good news in Islamabad on Tuesday night when a 75-year-old Pakistani grandmother and her daughter were pulled from a collapsed apartment block after rescuers said they thought they heard sounds from seven different people.

At least 40 people are thought still to be missing there, including European, Arab and Japanese nationals.

(additional reporting by Robert Birsel in Muzaffarabad, Zeeshan Haider in Islamabad and Kamil Zaheer in Pingla Haridal)

- REUTERS