Living close to the heavily militarised line of control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, she had expected the Pakistani soldiers to be her rescuers.

But then, on the fifth day, help finally arrived in the shape of four young, long-bearded men dressed in flowing robes and white headbands with Koranic inscriptions. “They helped us when everyone else had forgotten us,” she said, wiping away tears. “God grant his blessing to them.”

The rescuers were from Jamaat ul-Dawa, one of the country’s most prominent Islamic extremist groups and the parent organisation of a banned armed group fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir.

While the army, Government and international aid agencies were only just beginning to respond to the devastating earthquake, the foot soldiers of Dawa had sprung into action, venturing where nobody else had managed and winning hearts and minds among those they helped.

In Muzaffarabad, the shattered capital of Pakistanicontrolled Kashmir, the group was treating patients within half an hour of the quake. Within 36 hours they had a fully functioning field hospital.

“We were the first to start operations here,” said Javed al-Hassan, the camp co-ordinator, who is usually in charge of the group’s large network of madrassas across Pakistan. “We even treated Pakistani soldiers with first aid on the first day. Their own people could not cope.”

But Dawa is no ordinary charity. Founded in 1989 under a different name, it is the parent organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the most notorious of all the jihadi groups fighting Indian rule. The group was banned by Pakistan as a terrorist organisation in 2002 and has been linked by the US authorities to al-Qaeda. Dawa was put on a terrorist watch list by the Pakistani Government two years ago.

Its field hospital in Muzaffarabad is run by Amer Aziz, a British-trained orthopaedic surgeon most famous as Osama bin Laden’s one-time doctor and detained for his militant links soon after September 11.

Among survivors and ordinary Pakistanis watching events unfold on their television screens, the success of Dawa’s relief effort has done much to bolster its prestige at the expense of President Musharraf of Pakistan and the Pakistani Army, which has been criticised for its response to the earthquake.

The group is not the only militant-linked organisation operating in the earthquake zone to come under scrutiny. Jamiat-i-Islami, an Islamic political party with ideological links to Hamas, also runs its own relief efforts, as does the Al-Rasheed Trust, which had its US assets frozen in 2003 on the ground that it channels funds to al-Qaeda.

Mr al-Hassan became angry at the mention of the group’s militant links, pointing instead to the work it was doing and its acceptance by the army that it worked with, the Indonesian medical team carrying out operations in its theatre tents, and the French and Turkish rescue teams it had housed.

“This issue should be buried in the earth,” he said. “They say you are from Lashkar, you are from al-Qaeda. People are dying. If a man is from Lashkar and he is doing a good job, we should appreciate them. It’s not just his hobby to kill people. This is a jihad, too.”

Officially, Lashkar no longer exists, having been banned by the Government. But since the quake, Pakistani officials have appeared to acknowledge the militant infrastructure still exists, with Sikander Haya Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir, saying that “jihadi organisations had to face massive destruction” in the quake.

Those who have benefited from the groups’ rescue efforts, however, seem unconcerned by any suggestion that they may be involved in violence. “If Dawa people hadn’t helped us, we would have died,” Mrs Wahid said, nursing her five-year-old son, who has a serious leg fracture. “Nobody else came to help us. We are grateful to them and we offer them our support back.”

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