The United Nations begged the world on Thursday not to abandon survivors of Pakistan’s earthquake, warning of a second wave of deaths without a dramatic effort on a par with the Berlin airlift to reach stranded villagers.
”We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse,” Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator, said in Geneva.
Nearly two weeks after the earthquake that killed more than 50 000 people in South Asia, Pakistan set up new helipads and Nato shipped tonnes of aid, but the United Nations estimated half a million people were still cut off.
He called on the international community to launch a ”second Berlin airlift”, referring to the air shuttle that overcame the Soviet blockade of the German city in the late 1940s.
”Tens of thousands of people’s lives are at stake and they could die if we don’t get to them in time,” Egeland said.
‘I expect results’
He was echoing a strongly worded appeal by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who called late on Wednesday for an ”immediate and exceptional escalation of the global relief effort”.
”That means a second, massive wave of death will happen if we do not step up our efforts now,” Annan said at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
He said he would go in person next week to a UN-sponsored donors’ conference in Geneva on the disaster and urged governments to attend at the highest level.
”I expect results,” he said. ”There are no excuses. If we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge.”
Annan complained that donors had only made firm commitments of 12% of the UN flash appeal of $312-million, while the Asian tsunami appeal last December had been more than 80% funded within 10 days of the disaster.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country was among the first to respond in the immediate aftermath, visited Pakistan on Thursday while Britain pledged a further £20-million ($35,3-million).
Amid UN predictions that 120 000 survivors have still not been reached and that 10 000 more children could die, Pakistani authorities who are still providing the backbone of the relief effort welcomed Annan’s comments.
”We agree with the UN assessment that this is one of the most difficult missions ever due to rugged terrain,” said Pakistan’s disaster response chief, Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan.
He said more than 49 739 people have been confirmed dead and more than 74 000 were injured in Pakistan. The earthquake also killed 1 329 people in the Indian zone of Kashmir, according to Indian police.
Asked about a report that 79 000 people had died across South Asia in the disaster, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told Agence France Presse that official figures as of Thursday morning were far lower than that.
The military said it was stepping up its drive to get to the most remote areas using helicopters, mules and footsoldiers and would open 24 new helipads on Thursday for quake aid flights in the Kashmiri mountains.
The helipads will be set up outside Muzaffarabad — the capital of Pakistani Kashmir which is slowly returning to normal — in the devastated Jhelum and Neelum valleys that are only now seeing road links restored.
”Our village has been completely abandoned. It’s full of injured but we haven’t received any medical or food aid, nothing from the army,” said Ghulam Hussein (28) who had been walking for two days on a road in the Neelum Valley.
Nato, the North Atlantic alliance, also entered the relief operation, starting flights from its base in Incirlik, Turkey to Pakistan that will bring in about 900 tonnes of humanitarian aid from the UN refugee agency.
But hopes began to fade that another potential boost to the relief effort — opening the disputed border in Kashmir with India — would happen in the immediate future.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf proposed on Tuesday to open the de facto border after nearly six decades to let relatives help each other after the catastrophe.
But a foreign ministry official in New Delhi said Pakistan had sent no concrete details and that India had made no moves to open up Kashmir, where an insurgency against Indian rule has been raging for a decade and a half.
Kindest gift
Meanwhile, the family of a baby girl born in earthquake-hit Pakistan have named her Estonia in honour of the emergency medics from the Baltic state who delivered her, the Estonian rescue team said Thursday.
”This is the kindest gift we could imagine being given — to have a Pakistani child who was born in our tent named after our country,” said Tauno Suurkivi, head of the Estonian rescue team in Batagram, in the foothills of western Kashmir, in an e-mail sent from Pakistan.
On Saturday last week, eight Estonian rescue officials put up a huge medical tent in the devastated town. By the following day, nearly 1 500 patients had already been treated in the facility.
Six Estonian doctors have performed several difficult operations in their field hospital, including helping to deliver several babies, three by Caesarean section, Suurkivi said.
”The number of victims is huge and the need for medical assistance is increasing all the time. The situation in Batagram District is stabilising, but some areas are still isolated from outside world and the only chance to get aid there and get victims out is by using helicopters,” Suurkivi said.
”There is a lack of sterile materials and other medical equipment we consider normal, and a big need to provide tents, food and medical aid for people who have lost their homes and are located in the areas which are hard to reach due to the destroyed roads.”
Estonia sent a team of 16 rescuers to Pakistan to help with medical aid and logistics days after a powerful earthquake struck the South Asian country on October 8. – AFP
