ALIF DIN, 18, had just been flown in by helicopter from the mountain village of Syedpur. His back was crushed in the earthquake that destroyed his home and his family 24 days ago. His wounds were infected.

“There is 50 per cent chance that he can survive with emergency surgery,” Major Umer Fayaz, an army doctor, said.

Mohammed Habib, 11, had been carried by his father from another remote village, Chalian. His limbs were broken. “I walked for more than ten hours carrying him on my back,” the father said as he tried to calm his weeping son.

The two boys were among hundreds of wounded villagers still arriving at the Abbas Hospital in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, more than three weeks after the October 8 earthquake. They are the fortunate ones.

Pakistan raised its estimate of the death toll yesterday to 73,000, up 16,000 from Tuesday’s figure, with 69,000 listed as injured.

The toll would almost certainly rise further, Major-General Farooq Ahmad Khan, Pakistan’s top relief official, said. More than 40 isolated villages have yet to be reached.

People who survived the quake are beginning to die from untreated injuries. Soon they will be dying of cold as the Himalayan winter sets in.

Abbas was the only hospital in the ravaged city to survive the earthquake, and its doctors said that they were still performing between 30 to 40 operations a day.

“We are receiving more than 200 new cases every day, the majority of them having multiple fractures,” Shabbir Shakir, the head of the hospital, said. Hundreds of patients lie in the corridors and in tents inside the hospital compound. More than 120 doctors, from countries as diverse as Turkey, Bosnia and Tajikistan, are working around the clock.

“It is a very difficult situation,” Osman Muratovic, a surgeon from Bosnia who yesterday alone performed ten operations, said. “There seems to be no end to the wounded people being brought here.”

Other casualties are being treated in more than six makeshift field hospitals around the city. A US army field hospital set up last week has received more than 600 patients from the stricken areas.

“A lot of them come here at a very late stage with multiple fractures,” Sergeant-Major Costello Jose, a US officer, said. “Their condition is worsened by infection and malnutrition.”

SCALE OF THE DISASTER

73,276 new official death toll

1,350 died in India- controlled Kashmir

69,000 seriously injured

24 US military helicopters helping relief effort

$550 million sought by the UN for aid

500,000 tents needed for homeless $131 million pledged so far

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