A Kashmiri woman holds her injured child outside a hospital in Karnah near the Line of Control in Indian-administered Kashmir yesterday. India's Prime Minister pledged to rebuild the lives of thousands of people in Indian Kashmir whose world was destroyed by the South Asia earthquake on Sunday. - REUTERS
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, (Reuters):
RELIEF EFFORTS remained chaotic late yesterday, nearly four days after the Kashmir earthquake which is now thought to have killed some 40,000 people, and hopes of finding more survivors were fading.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pledges poured in from around the world and Pakistani leaders said relief efforts were picking up speed, but few emergency supplies have reached desperate survivors because of blocked roads and shortages of aircraft, particularly helicopters.
Some of the hardest hit areas received their first aid early yesterday as more helicopters joined the operation, but flights had to be halted for several hours because of torrential rains and hailstorms that added to the misery on the ground.
Officials in the worst-hit areas of Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province said the quake, whose 7.6 magnitude made it the strongest to hit the region in a century, may have claimed up to 40,000 lives.
A further 2,000 people are feared to have been killed across the border in Indian Kashmir.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a news conference the confirmed toll so far in Pakistan was 23,000 dead and 51,000 injured, while India has confirmed slightly over 1,200 deaths.
