Looters hit quake-ravaged areas

2005-10-10 16:08

Muzaffarabad - Aircraft rushed in supplies from abroad and Washington pledged $50 million in aid on Monday as hungry families displaced in Pakistan's worst earthquake huddled in tents and shopkeepers clashed with looters.

Death toll estimates ranged from 20 000 to above 30 000.

The United Nations said over 2.5 million people were left homeless by Saturday's monster 7.6-magnitude quake, which razed entire villages, and doctors warned of an outbreak of disease unless more relief arrives soon.

With landslides blocking roads to many of the worst-hit areas, Pakistan's army was flying food, water and medicine into the disaster zone.

Flights carrying rescue teams and supplies arrived in Islamabad, including eight US military helicopters from Afghanistan.

Washington pledged up to $50m in relief and reconstruction aid, US ambassador Ryan Crocker said.

"The magnitude of this disaster is utterly overwhelming," Crocker said.

"We have under way the beginning of a very major relief effort."

Most of the dead were in Pakistan's mountainous north. India reported at least 865 deaths, and Afghanistan reported four.

In the shattered streets of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's portion of divided Kashmir, an Associated Press reporter saw shopkeepers scuffle with people trying to break into shuttered businesses.

No police were in the area.

Residents said looters were also targeting deserted homes, and even fuel stations.

Survivors lacked food and water amid little sign of any official co-ordination of relief in the devastated city of 600 000, where at least 11 000 people died.

An eight-member team of British rescuers using a sniffer dog, drills, chain saws and crowbars pulled a 20-year-old tailor from the rubble on Monday, 54 hours after a two-story building collapsed over him and dozens of others.

The man, Tariq, was wide-eyed and covered in dust when he emerged, and he begged for water.

"I haven't eaten in three days, but I'm not hungry," said Tariq, who suffered a leg injury and was carried away on a door serving as a stretcher.

He had been trapped beneath concrete and wooden beams, and a dead body lay on either side of him.

About 2 000 people huddled around camp fires through the cold night on a soccer field on the city's university campus, where most buildings had collapsed and hundreds were feared buried in classrooms and dormitories.

Soldiers burrowed into the concrete with shovels and iron bars.

"I don't think anybody is alive in this pile of rubble," rescue worker Uzair Khan said. "But we have not lost hope."

A doctor, Iqbal Khan, said there was a serious risk of outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia if drinking water and other relief supplies do not arrive quickly.

"These people feel as if there is no one to take care of them," he said.

- AP