Time running out for quake victims

WITH snow falling on parts of Kashmir, the UN's emergency relief chief said yesterday that time was running out for many hungry, homeless survivors of a massive earthquake.

The organisation urged aid agencies to speed up efforts in remote villages.

The plea came as aid workers struggled to reach remote areas and hours after an aftershock jolted parts of Pakistan, panicking people who had survived last weekend's devastating temblor.

UN Undersecretary General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland flew by helicopter to the hard-hit Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad, where he said there was an urgent need to get food, medicine, shelter and blankets to millions of people. The UN estimates two million people are homeless ahead of the fierce winter in the Himalayan region.

The death toll was believed to be more than 35,000 and tens of thousands were injured.

"I fear we are losing the race against the clock in the small villages" cut off by blocked roads, Mr Egeland said. "I've never seen such devastation before."

The US military in Afghanistan loaded cargo planes with food, tarpaulins and other emergency aid to drop by parachute over areas of Pakistan, officials said.

Trucks with aid from dozens of countries choked the roads up to the crumbling towns of Kashmir, but access to some areas remained blocked because of landslides and people in many remote areas where there are no roads were still in desperate straits five days after the temblor struck.

ActionAid International in Pakistan spokesperson Shafqat Munir said: "It's cold, raining. People are without shelter. They have food, clothes, blankets, but tents are a problem."

The 5.6-magnitude aftershock was centred 137 kilometres north of Islamabad, near the epicentre of Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake that demolished whole towns, mostly in Kashmir and north-western Pakistan. The aftershock shook buildings, but no significant damage in the already demolished region was reported.

A 22-year-old woman trapped in the rubble in Muzaffarabad died yesterday after the aftershock disrupted efforts to rescue her.

British, German and Turkish teams had worked until 2am, trying to extract the woman after a sniffer dog detected her in the debris. But they were forced to suspend their efforts amid fears for their own safety when the aftershock shifted the building in which they were working.

When the rescuers returned, the sniffer dog whined, indicating it detected the smell of a corpse. Some rescue workers wept.