More aid sought for quake victims

EFFORTS to reach stranded villagers in Pakistan’s northern mountains gathered pace yesterday after the country’s friends and foes both urged help for up to three million survivors rattled by fresh aftershocks.

One on Sunday evening, at magnitude 6.0, was among the strongest of nearly 900 recorded since the October 8 quake, but there were no reports of new deaths.

Equally important, there were no reports of major landslides in the rugged hills where army engineers are working around the clock to reopen roads destroyed in the quake which killed at least 53,000 people and left more than 75,000 seriously injured. Only when the roads are rebuilt can aid be delivered in sufficient quantities to an estimated 2,000 still unreached villages to allow hundreds of thousands of people to survive the rapidly approaching winter.