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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
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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