Millions of survivors of Pakistan’s earthquake are facing the threat of a second catastrophe because the international relief operation is failing to reach victims trapped in cold mountain areas without food, shelter or medical care.
The death toll stands at 33,000, but aid workers warn that many more are at risk of dying from exposure or disease.
Winter is three weeks away with night-time temperatures as low as 6C, and the worst affected areas of Kashmir are drenched by heavy rains which have severely hampered the relief effort. Yesterday helicopters ferrying relief were grounded by the storms.
Today a five-year-old girl was pulled alive from the rubble of her home in Muzzafarabad, where her father and two of her sisters have died. Caked in dust, Zarabe Shah whispered: "I want to drink."
But such successful rescues are becoming increasingly rare as the days pass since Saturday's quake.
Attention is turning towards relieving the plight of the 2.5 million people who have lost their homes, according to the Pakistani authorities. Patience is already running short among the needy, and there have been reports of desperate crowds mobbing aid trucks in Muzzafarabad, jostling to grab what food and water they could and pushing the weak aside.
"We only see things coming and going. We need food, we need water," said a man, who today fought with other refuguees to clamber up into a truck and seize blankets and packets of biscuits.
The United Nations estimates that four million people have been affected by the earthquake. Eighty per cent of buildings and structures, including 1,000 hospitals, have been destroyed.
The UN has appealed for £151 million to fund an emergency operation for the next six months, to provide tents and blankets to shelter people whose homes were flattened, to buy food and medicines and, most important, the provide the means to deliver the aid by air to otherwise inaccessible areas.
Tony Blair today pledged an additional £10 million towards the relief effort on top of the £2 million already offered by the Government. British Muslims had condemned the original amount as inadequate.
An emergency flight funded by the Government and organised by the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee was due to arrive in Pakistan today, carrying 800 tents and 19,000 blankets to be handed out by Oxfam and Islamic Relief.
Hundreds of the 750,000 people of Pakistani descent in Britain have been granted emergency visas to fly to Pakistan to hunt for missing relatives.
Islamic charities in Britain report that phones had been ringing off the hook with pledges of support. The first week of Ramadan is traditionally a time to give to charity. "It's overwhelming," said Ebrahimsa Mohammed, chief executive of Muslim Aid.
Many roads to the stricken region have been cut off by mudslides and rock falls. While aid is beginning to reach towns such as Muzaffarabad, the regional capital, hundreds of remote communities are only accessible by helicopter.
"The aid is being looted in Muzzafarabad, it's not getting here," said a villager in Karadla Syedian, where 150 people have died and a further 50 are missing.
Irfan Ahmed, a doctor with the British-based charity Plan, who has visited the remote Siran valley which was devastated by the quake, said that gangrene was spreading in untreated wounds, and the weak were developing diarrhea because water supplies were tainted by mud.
Amanullah Khan, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, said that people were growing angrier every day. "The government is not doing anything to provide relief to people," he told the Reuters news agency.
He claimed that in some areas, outlawed Kashmiri militant groups were the only people helping the relief effort. Hundreds of guerrillas are also thought to be among the 20,000 victims on the Pakistani side.
The United Jihad Council, a loose alliance of pro-Pakistan militant outfits, yesterday announced a temporary truce in the Indian-controlled areas hit by the earthquake.
The Pakistani army says that it is setting up distribution points to ensure that government aid is properly shared out. A senior Pakistani minister today acknowledged that aid was slow in getting through, but denied that anger was growing. "The morale of the people is high," claimed Raja Abdul Quyyum.
Unlike other relief operations, such as the areas affected by the Boxing Day tsunami, the immediate problem is not in getting aid to Pakistan. UN agencies assisting Afghan refugees already have warehouses stored with supplies in the country, and more is pouring in from 30 countries.
"Relief material is moving in," said Jan Vandemoortele, the UN resident co-ordinator for Pakistan. "It is getting there. Roads are open now. They were blocked until very recently. We have several trucks that are all loaded and on the roads now."
To help, the US military has diverted five giant Chinooks and three Black Hawk helicopters from neighbouring Afghanistan to ferry the wounded to makeshift field hospitals, and to carry aid.
Three hospitals have been set up and three more will be open by the end of today. The US is sending 24 more Chinooks as well as bulldozers and tractors. Nato forces are sending troops from Afghanistan with 50 German soldiers already on the ground.
The first US helicopters were flying an average of 80 sorties a day ferrying supplies to stricken areas and returning with casualties. However, heavy rains yesterday grounded all aircraft.
Aid workers said that a bottleneck had developed in Islamabad, where the airport was too small to handle the volume of aid arriving. An Indian plane carrying medicines, blankets and tents returned with its full load last night after being told that it had nowhere to park at Islamabad airport. It was to have been the first aid airlift between the two countries for decades.
Some have blamed the Pakistani authorities for poor coordination that may have cost lives. In the first 24 hours there was no serious effort to mobilise relief work. On Monday the Government belatedly appointed Major-General Mohammed Farooq to head the Federal Relief Commission, to co-ordinate rescue efforts between foreign aid workers and thousands of Pakistani troops.
President Musharraf has appealed to the nation to remain calm and show patience. He rejected allegations that the authorities had been lax. "We are doing whatever is humanly possible," he said.
Shaukat Aziz, the Prime Minister, said that the country has already received more than $300 million in foreign aid and another $600 million collected through public donations. In addition Kuwait and United Arab Emirates have each pledged $100 million.
The UN World Food Programme began a major airlift of emergency food supplies. The International Red Cross said it planned to provide emergency food and shelter to 120,000 vulnerable people stranded in the freezing weather.
HOW TO HELP
Donations can be made through the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) website at www.dec.org.uk or by phone on 0870 6060 900
