Victims scuffle for aid

Kashmiri survivors grasp for relief supplies at a makeshift relief camp in the midst of a devastated thickly populated residential area of Muzaffarabad, capital city of Pakistan administered Kashmir, yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

The government's official death toll remained at slightly over 20,000 people, but a senior army official who is close to the rescue operations said Tuesday that "according to our assessment, the death toll is between 35,000 to 40,000 people."

Most of the dead were in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, said the official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to disclose the estimate to journalists. Previously, the top elected official in Kashmir had estimated the toll at more than 25,000, while the province's communications minister, Tariq Mahmood, said it was more than 30,000.

US military helicopters, diverted from neighbouring Afghanistan, helped ferry wounded people from the wrecked city of Muzaffarabad, while international rescue teams joined searches during the waning days of hope for finding survivors.

About 10 trucks brought by Pakistani charities and volunteers rumbled into that city, where efforts by relief workers to distribute aid turned chaotic as residents scuffled for the handouts of cooking oil, sugar, rice, blankets and tents.

It was the first major influx of aid since the monster 7.6-magnitude quake struck Saturday morning, destroying most homes and all government buildings in this city, and leaving its 600,000 people without power or water. Most have spent three cold nights without shelter.

Two or three police looked on helplessly as more than 200 people raided a stock of food arranged by relief workers at a soccer field near Muzaffarabad's centre one of six designated aid distribution points. One man made off with a big sack of sugar, another left on a motorized rickshaw with a big crate of drinking water.

"Relief activity has started on a massive level," said deputy city commissioner Masood-ur Rehman. He said two army brigades would start clearing roads and debris in the city on Tuesday.

In the northern town of Balakot, a French team rescued a number of children from a buried school on Monday. Eric Supara, an official at the French embassy in Islamabad, said five children were saved.

Meanwhile, torrential rain lashed quake-hit Muzaffarabad yesterday, bringing aid efforts in the devastated Kashmiri city to a temporary standstill, witnesses said.

Helicopters that have been making regular flights to bring aid and evacuate the injured from the Pakistani Kashmir capital were halted by the storm, an AFP correspondent said.

The storm rolled over the area in the early afternoon, turning the rubble-ridden streets into rivers of slush but -- for a while at least -- washing away the stench of death.

"It's brought everything to a halt," the correspondent said.

Muzaffarabad sits in the bottom of the mountainous Kashmir valley and can suffer from violently unpredictable weather.

Other areas in the quake zone were hit by thunder and hailstorms, witnesses and weather officials said.

"It is raining in the whole area from Mansehra to Abbotabad right now," a meteorological office spokesman said.