Muzaffarabad

Relentless rain triggered landslides and roof collapses across northern Pakistan, leaving at least 67 people dead, officials and reports said on Wednesday. At least 37 survivors of the devastating 2005 earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir were killed when landslides swept away their mountainside homes, a police spokesperson said.

Before the massive earthquake that laid waste to a swathe of South Asia on October 8 last year, Assia Begum had four children. A few terrifying minutes afterwards, she had nine. Assia instantly took charge of five children born to her husband’s second wife, Shenaz, who lay crushed to death in the ruins of their shared house.

Aid officials warned on Friday that almost all of the hundreds of thousands of tents they distributed to survivors of Pakistan’s massive earthquake last month aren’t adequate for the harsh winter, while Pakistan announced soldiers have built 30 000 shelters for the 3,5-million people who lost their homes.

Doctors have begun immunising more than one million children against infectious diseases in crowded camps for Pakistani earthquake survivors, as rivals Pakistan and India move tentatively toward better relations with a further exchange of relief materials.

Pakistani police using canes and rifle butts broke up a march on Friday by earthquake survivors protesting what they said were orders to evict them from a makeshift refugee camp. Police denied they were forcing people to leave. Meanwhile, international lenders estimated the economic cost of the quake at more than -billion.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Friday accused the West of double standards for failing to meet the country’s quake aid needs, adding that he will delay buying United States fighter jets to focus on relief efforts. Musharraf met quake survivors in stricken Kashmir during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

Quake survivors massed in debris-strewn fields to pray and mark a normally joyous Muslim festival in a somber tone on Friday as preachers called South Asia’s devastating earthquake a test of faith and punishment for wrongdoing. Former United States president Bill Clinton urged Pakistan and India to set aside their rivalry.

The official death toll in Pakistan from the mammoth October 8 earthquake has jumped to more than 73 000, with about the same number listed as severely injured. Meanwhile, the United States military resumed relief flights in northern Pakistan on Wednesday after one of its choppers allegedly came under attack.

Arch-rivals India and Pakistan started talks on Saturday on an unprecedented opening of their disputed Kashmir border to help the relief effort for victims of the massive earthquake believed to have killed up to 80 000 people, officials said on Saturday. The latest in hundreds of aftershocks struck early on Saturday.

More help arrived in quake-hit Pakistan on Monday as the United Nations warned that time is running out for survivors of the worst catastrophe in the country’s history. ”We are facing an enormous humanitarian catastrophe,” European Union humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel said.

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 thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse,” said Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator.

Villages wiped off the map, bodies rotting, survivors walking hours for water — earthquake victims fleeing Kashmir’s still inaccessible mountains recount the same apocalyptic tales. As villagers trudge into Pakistani Kashmir’s ravaged capital, they recount stories of entire towns razed and out of reach of food and medicine.

A strong aftershock shook Pakistan on Thursday, rattling the nerves of those who lived through last weekend’s devastating earthquake and bringing an even greater sense of urgency to efforts to find survivors under the precarious rubble. The death toll is believed to be more than 35 000.

Relief teams raced food and supplies into earthquake-hit areas of northern Pakistan on Wednesday as desperate survivors readied for a fifth straight night of cold and hunger. A child, a mother-of-three and an elderly man came out of different areas of devastated Pakistani-held Kashmir alive after being buried by the quake.

Huddling under bits of plastic, survivors in quake-hit Muzaffarabad faced fresh heartbreak on Tuesday as torrential rain halted aid efforts hours after they got into gear. Helicopters were forced to stop their mercy flights bringing aid to the Pakistani Kashmir capital and evacuating the worst of the injured from Saturday’s earthquake to hospitals in Islamabad.

Aircraft rushed in supplies from abroad and Washington pledged -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 40 000.