PAKISTAN: Torrential rain and high winds lashed earthquake-ravaged Pakistan yesterday, halting relief efforts and inflicting additional suffering on dazed survivors of last weekend's tremors that left up to 40,000 people dead and millions homeless.
Officials fear this may not be the final casualty figure as dozens of helicopters, including giant US military Chinooks redeployed from neighbouring Afghanistan, which have become the lifeline to the quake-ravaged northeastern Kashmir region, were grounded by bad weather.
Road convoys ferrying food and relief materials to the region also got stuck as the hungry and miserable scrambled for anything they could get.
The homeless grabbed whatever shelter they were able to find after Saturday's earthquake ravaged their already poor, under-developed and relatively inaccessible province.
Aid groups suspended the distribution of desperately needed food, blankets, tents, clothing and water, while corpses lay along streets and mountain-sides until they can be buried. Rescue teams have abandoned their search for survivors and are concentrating on expanding relief.
Harsh weather threatened the quake-battered region with landslides, especially along the serpentine mountainous roads into Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, a day after they were cleared of debris by the Pakistan army.
Some 11,000 people are thought to have died in Muzaffarabad, the epicentre of the earthquake, which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, almost completely demolishing the town.
Three days afterwards there was no space for the wounded or the living, forcing them to spend nights in freezing and inclement weather without food or medical care.
The United Nations, which yesterday appealed for $272 million in aid, estimates that about 2.5 million people were in need of shelter and, with winter snows just a few weeks away, the situation is dire.
The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has warned of the possibility of an epidemic of water-borne diseases in Muzaffarabad where thousands, including hundreds of children, still lie buried beneath crushed schools and homes.
"Since few people have shelter, they're crowding into homes and camp-type situations, so there's a lot of potential for health risks," said Isabelle Simpson, the Paris-based group's chief in Islamabad.
UN relief officials said almost all the hospitals in the area, of which there are few even at the best of times, had been destroyed in the earthquake, severely hampering urgent medical treatment for those injured.
At Muzaffarabad's University Stadium, hundreds of casualties lay in the open waiting to be taken to field hospitals on helicopters that never came because of the bad weather.
A French rescue team said five children had been found alive since Monday in the rubble of a school in Balakot, a once-scenic town which has been totally flattened.
A 75-year-old Pakistani grandmother and her daughter were also pulled alive from a collapsed apartment block.
"With every passing hour, the probability of finding anyone decreases," said Alain Pasche from the UN Disaster Assessments and Co-ordination team.
Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, said his government was doing its best to respond to the crisis.
"We are doing whatever is humanly possible," he said. "There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help."
Offers of aid continued to pour in from around the world, including $200 million from the Gulf sheikhdoms and Kuwait, along with US soldiers and army doctors from Afghanistan.
Neighbouring nuclear rival India was also waiting to ferry 25 tonnes of aid to Islamabad in the first such airlift for decades, but is disappointed that Islamabad turned down its offer of joint relief teams for the divided Kashmir province.
"We are willing to supply to Pakistan whatever is on their priority list," said India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
Indian officials, meanwhile, said the overnight estimate of fatalities in its Kashmir territory had risen by about 400 to 1,300.
The prime minister pledged $116 million to help rebuild Kashmir's devastated districts as he toured the earthquake zone where the military, heavily deployed along the de facto border with Pakistan, has, much to the locals delight, taken the lead in relief work.