Relief flights increase but victims cry for more
Relief operations in
Army spokesman Maj Farooq Nasir said blue skies after torrential downpours on Tuesday had cleared the way for more mercy flights to bring badly needed food and medicine, and take away the injured.
“We are bringing in food, blankets, tents, and rescue teams. The weather has cleared so we’re going full-ahead now with the relief operations,” Nasir told AFP. Towns and villages across northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir have turned into makeshift refugee camps, with shocked survivors huddling under whatever they can find as they wait for aid that many say has been coming too slow.
Relief teams raced food and supplies into earthquake-hit areas as desperate survivors readied for a fifth straight night of cold and hunger. “That was the fourth night we slept in the open,” said Khurshid Bibi, pointing to her family of 15 camped on the roadside outside their collapsed house. “We were very, very cold. We need tents and blankets,” she said after waking up to see snow had fallen on the peaks surrounding the ruined city of 125,000 which has been reduced to piles of crushed concrete.
Nasir said 95 helicopter relief flights had brought vital supplies to the worst-hit regions of Kashmir over the past 24 hours, including 12 in the first few hours of daylight on Wednesday. Witnesses said US army Chinook helicopters could be heard over Muzaffarabad shortly after sunrise.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees began distributing tents, plastic sheeting, mattresses, kitchen sets and other items from its warehouses in Peshawar. The UN said the
Trucks started streaming into
The search for survivors was also continuing even as hopes faded that anyone could still be alive beneath the rubble. On Wednesday, a child, a mother-of-three and an elderly man came out of different areas alive.
“For now we are concentrating on search and rescue. We’re coordinating with the Pakistani Army as to when relief distribution will begin,” said a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination spokesman.
Jan Vandemoortele, UN Resident Coordinator for Pakistan, admitted that some areas still had not seen a single relief worker due to the difficulty of accessing the mountainous terrain. In villages in a breathtakingly beautiful valley just 10 km outside Muzaffarabad, people say they have been given no help. Many are seething.
“If they find a government official here he will die,” said Syed Abdul Wadood Shah, who was leaving his home village of Karadla Syedian, taking his large family down to the lowland. Shah said 150 people in the village had been killed in the quake and 50 were missing in landslides and under the rubble of 350 ruined buildings. “But these numbers don’t tell the situation,” he said.
“The aid is being looted in Muzaffarabad, it’s not getting here,” another villager said. Shah’s village looks as if it used to be relatively prosperous. Terraced fields of wheat, rice and corn slope down towards the Jhelum river against a back-drop of green hills dotted with small settlements. “People have money but it’s in the banks,” Shah said, referring to banks in the ruined city of Muzaffarabad.
Vandemoortele said: “We already have three field hospitals, one in Muzaffarabad, one in Mansehra and one in Bagh that will be operational today. There were 10 hospitals in Muzaffarabad but there are no more,” he said.
Meanwhile, Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Shaukat Sultan said around 3.3 million people spread over an area of 20,000 square-kilometre were worst affected by October 8 earthquake and subsequent aftershocks.
Briefing media persons on the relief and rescue operations being carried out in the quake-hit areas, he said around 50,000 troops besides a large number of volunteers are engaged in the relief and rescue operations.
“We are trying to reach every place which is worst hit during the quake,” he said, adding so far 23,000 deaths have been confirmed and the toll could increase further. There are 51,000 injured in the quake, he added.
Giving the break-up of the total victims, Shaukat said around 1.3 million people were affected in NWFP while two million in Azad Kashmir. He said so far 430 deaths of soldiers of Pakistan Army have been confirmed while over 700 are injured.
He said 27 tonnes of ration, 15 tonnes of medicines, 9.9 tonnes of water, 9,270 blankets and 937 tents have been transported through helicopters to the affected areas. Also, the PAF has established a forward base at Muzaffarabad airfield to provide efficient relief support and material facilities to the quake survivors. This forward operational base is manned by PAF personnel under the command of an Air Vice Marshal.
Our Peshawar correspondents add: Traffic on Mansehra-Muzaffarabad road remained jam on Wednesday due to rush of heavy vehicles carrying relief goods to the earthquake-hit areas of northern districts of NWFP and AJK. However, Mansehra-Besham highway was still blocked and reports from Alai, Battagram and Besham suggested that relief activities were not yet started and many people were trapped under rubble.
There were also reports of heavy casualties at Balakot area of Abbottabad and inaccessible areas of Kohistan and Mansehra districts where rescue operation could not be launched either because of lack of expert rescue teams or inaccessibility. While bad weather compound the miseries of those suffering from the worst type of tremor in the history of Pakistan.
On the other hand shifting of heavy machinery, including bulldozers and cranes, continued to the areas where roads were cleared. There were also reports of looting relief items by the victims as large number of trucks and other vehicles carrying relief goods were moving towards Muzaffarabad and parts of Mansehra, Battagram etc.
The official death toll in Mansehra district rose to 6,780 Wednesday as more bodies were recovered from debris of destroyed houses and shops. A police report said Balakot suffered the most with 3,994 deaths and 5,350 injured. About 4,000 houses and shops were destroyed in Balakot town and villages falling in the jurisdiction of Balakot police station.
Garhi Habibullah also suffered heavily due to the earthquake with 1,945 deaths and injuries to 2,315 persons. The number of houses that collapsed in Garhi Habibullah totalled 5,177. The death toll, according to police report, was 495 in Battal, 411 in Shinkiari, 307 in police station Kaghan area, 64 in Baffa, 66 in Oghi, six in Mansehra Saddar, one in Phulra and two in Darband.
Survivors of the earthquake from the remote Alai valley have for the first time reached the district headquarters of Battagram to narrate painful stories of death and destruction and to inform the world about the loss of more than 1,000 villagers under the debris of their flattened homes.
On Wednesday, military helicopters made the first sorties to Alai taking doctors and medicines to the quake-devastated valley and bringing out the injured for much-needed treatment in Battagram and Mansehra.
A few reporters who hopped on to the choppers came back from Alai with heart-rending description of the suffering endured by the inhabitants of the still beautiful but increasingly desolate valley.
Source: The News
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