Cancelled flights leave millions in waiting

More than a week after the October 8 earthquake, which tore apart entire villages, much of the relief aid was just trickling in to the neediest areas. Aid workers looked for donkeys and mules to get them through.

In Muzaffarabad, the ravaged Kashmiri city where nearly half of Pakistan's 39,422 earthquake victims died, only two choppers braved the foul weather which brought new misery to the country's more than three million homeless.

The helicopters were cancelled a day after the massive aid operation saw its first accident. Six Pakistani military personnel died when their chopper crashed near the Kashmiri town of Bagh.

Relief flights were also called off on the Indian side of divided Kashmir where at least 1,329 people died in the earthquake, an Indian army officer said.

Pakistani Major Fayaz Ali said the only choppers to fly in Muzaffarabad Sunday were from the German military, which sent engineers to repair a remote road and bring back injured, and from the Aga Khan Foundation charity.

"It's cloudy and there is no clear air route," Ali said.

"The day is not completely lost. Some relief goods were sent by road."

Relief workers said there was no time to spare because thousands were at risk of dying unless they got help -- particularly shelter.

"It's a logistical nightmare," said Alain Pasche, coordinator of UN relief operations in Muzaffarabad.

"Especially so in the little villages and for the people who are coming into Muzaffarabad. The situation is catastrophic here," he told AFP.

In the villages, "the problem is that we don't have any toll. We don't know the exact population or their needs. There is a a lack of means. The army stocks are all under the rubble," he said.

So far four countries -- the United States, Germany, Japan and impoverished neighbour Afghanistan -- have responded to Pakistan's request for helicopters but the Japanese choppers are not yet in operation, officials said.

Keith Ursel of the World Food Program said the UN agency has distributed 40 tons (tonnes) of high-energy biscuits but it was still waiting to hand out 500 tons per day of traditional-food rations including lentils, wheat, tea, dates and sugar.

"It's too slow and too difficult. We'll get horses and donkeys today hopefully," he said.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was also just beginning its work in Pakistani Kashmir after conducting an aerial assessment Saturday, UNHCR official Joseph Robinson said.

The supplies are coming in more than a week after the earthquake despite repeated warnings that thousands face disease or even death unless they urgently get help.

The latest note of alarm came from Balakot in North West Frontier Province, where a doctor said a catastrophe could be underway in the remote mountains.

"It's absolutely urgent right now to send tents to give people shelter. If nothing is done there will be thousands of deaths" in mountain villages, said Thierry Velu, head of the French aid group Groupe de Secours Catastrophe Francais.