Aftershock jolts Pakistan

A severe aftershock jolted northwestern Pakistan today, a day after India sharply curtailed plans to open its Kashmir border to help survivors of the region’s massive earthquake.

There were no immediate reports of damage from the temblor in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, but it measured 6 – the highest magnitude so far for an aftershock of last month’s massive 7.6-magnitude quake, said seismologists in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

The 1,190 aftershocks since that quake have sparked landslides that added to the debris blocking roads needed to distribute much-needed aid to remote mountain settlements.

Forecasts of snow in northern Pakistan, meanwhile, added to the ordeal for hundreds of thousands of survivors still without shelter nearly a month after the quake, as UN and other aid agencies struggle with limited budgets to deliver help by helicopter before winter.

Cuban President Fidel Castro called Pakistan’s president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, to express solidarity and offer to send an additional 200 Cuban doctors to the quake zone – to join 87 already there, state-run Pakistan Television reported.

After the October 8 quake killed about 80,000 people – most in Pakistan’s territory but also 1,350 in India’s portion of divided Kashmir – the two longtime rivals reached a breakthrough agreement to open five border crossings starting tomorrow to ease the flow of aid.

But India said yesterday that only one crossing into Pakistani territory would be ready, a glitch in the disaster diplomacy that has brought the countries closer in a time of need.

However, New Delhi said work would continue on clearing the routes, and that two additional ones might be ready in the coming week.

Many survivors are eager to cross over to check on relatives, exchange provisions and seek help at relief camps being set up along the heavily militarised border.

Indian army spokesman Lt Col V K Batra said that two of the Kashmir frontier crossings were not ready because of land mines and landslides on the Indian side, but he also blamed Pakistan for delays in clearing two other routes, saying its work on bridges at the crossings was incomplete.

Pakistani officials, however, said their side was ready to open all five crossings.

“All preparations on the Pakistan side are complete at the designated places,” Pakistan’s army said in a statement.

In Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir, Deputy Police Chief Ata Ullah said diplomats from both countries had been due to meet yesterday to exchange lists of people intending to cross over – but the meeting was cancelled. He did not explain why.

Ullah said the cancellation raised doubts about whether any crossings would take place tomorrow.

Kashmir was split between India and Pakistan after the bloody partition of the subcontinent following independence from Britain in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir in a dispute that has sparked two wars and kept families separated for more than half a century.

The quake left more than three million people homeless – a particular concern with the fierce winter approaching.

The UN estimates that 800,000 people are without shelter, 200,000 of them in remote, mostly high-altitude hamlets not yet reached by any aid workers.

Some snow already has fallen at elevations of about 10,000ft, and Pakistan’s Meteorological Department said more was likely in the next few days at elevations as low as 5,000ft.

The United Nations, which warned that it would reduce its relief missions soon due to underfunding, will announce details of its cutbacks on Tuesday, exactly a month after the quake, said spokeswoman Amanda Pitt.

She declined t reveal any details, but said the UN has received only a quarter of the £314m it needs for humanitarian operations in the quake-ravaged area for the next six months.