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Desperate Pakistanis await earthquake aid
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-11 09:11
Desperate Pakistanis huddled against the cold and some looted food stores
Monday because aid still had not reached remote areas of Kashmir, where a
devastating earthquake flattened villages, cut off power and water, and killed
tens of thousands.
Officials predict the death toll, now estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000,
will climb because of exposure and disease. With winter just six weeks away, the
United Nations has said 2.5 million people near the Pakistan-India border need
shelter.
More than two days after the magnitude-7.6 quake, survivors were pulled from
under piles of concrete, steel and wood in the mountainous swath touching
Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. A man was rescued from a pancaked two-story
house in Muzaffarabad, two girls were plucked from a collapsed school in
Balakot, and a woman and child were pulled from an apartment building in
Islamabad.
A man with white gloves stands atop the debris
of Margala Towers and rises his hands to singnal for silence from all
those around the debris of Margala Towers, during the rescue of a two-year
old boy and a woman by a British 'RAPID UK Search and Rescue' team after
Saturday's earthquake, in Islamabad on Monday, Oct. 10,
2005.[AP] | Injured people were airlifted from
remote areas, and Pakistan's army distributed rice to starving survivors.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said his government was doing its best to
respond to the crisis. He had appealed for international help, particularly
cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides.
"We are doing whatever is humanly possible," Musharraf said. "There should
not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need
our help."
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