Local officials, unable to provide any guidance or help, are hindering rescue and relief workers arriving in western India to help with the country's worst-ever earthquake disaster.
"We are launching the biggest ever relief and rescue operation ever undertaken by us. But I don't know where to start, as there is no one to talk to me or tell me how and where to start work," said Mr Lauritzsen Holvar, who heads the International Red Cross Society's relief efforts in the earthquakestricken state of Gujarat.
He told a local newspaper he had been waiting in Bhuj, near the epicentre and one of the worst affected towns, for hours, but local officials had not given him an audience.
"We plan to fly in planeloads of relief and rescue materials and medicines every hour from across the world, including two hospitals which can perform all major surgeries. But if people don't talk to me I will be forced to cancel it," Mr Holvar said.
"The priority should be to find all those who are trapped and still alive," said Mr Mumt za Darzdiani of the Turkish rescue team. But until late on Tuesday, he added, they were awaiting guidelines or some official support to start their work, at a time when the probability of finding survivors was still high.
Other rescue teams said state officials were too busy organising a visit by the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, to the area earlier this week to even bother directing them to areas where they could pull out victims from the rubble.
Meanwhile, the 69-member British rescue team which rescued six people, including an infant, and had extended its departure by 24 hours, is finally pulling out of Bhuj today, saying its work is complete. The members leave for Britain tomorrow. The final death toll from the quake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale, will not be known until relief teams clear the debris over the next few weeks, but estimates range from 20,000 up to 100,000 dead and over 50,000 injured, many seriously.
"Rescue is the last thing on the mind of the local authorities," said Mr Jaipdeel Waghela, a Bhuj resident. He said columns of heavy engineering equipment such as cranes and bulldozers were being forced to wait outside the city, as the authorities were unable to keep the streets clear.
Rescuers, meanwhile, pulled out a 55-year-old woman from the rubble in Ahmedabad, the state's commercial capital where over 500 people died after some 100 high-rise buildings crumbled. The rescued woman was so badly injured, pinned under a heavy roof beam, that rescue team doctors had to amputate both her legs and an arm.
A day earlier army engineers tore through a concrete slab and discovered a wailing baby and minutes later pulled his mother to safety in an Ahmedabad neighbourhood. Recovering Ms Nalinibehn Kumbhare and Keyur, her 15-month-old son, after their 100-hour trauma was a rare cheerful moment in the tragedy that has enveloped the city.
Archbishop Eames of Armagh and Archbishop Empey of Dublin have authorised an emergency grant of £20,000 from the Church of Ireland Bishops' Appeal to assist the relief work in Gujarat. The grant will assist the work of the Churches' Auxiliary for Social Action (CASA), the Indian churches' development wing and a long-standing partner of Christian Aid.
