A halt in heavy rains yesterday allowed helicopter relief flights to resume across Pakistan's quake zone, but fresh landslides hampered efforts to move supplies by road and officials estimated the death toll could now be more than 54,000.
Eight international medical teams took off from Muzaffarabad to outlying villages, as fears grew for millions of survivors without healthcare and shelter in the isolated mountains of Kashmir. US diplomat Geoffrey Krassy estimated that about one-fifth of populated areas had yet to be reached.
"There are serious patients with infected wounds and gangrene," said Sebastian Nouak of the International Committee of the Red Cross, after a team of its doctors landed in Chekar, about 60km east of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's part of the divided Himalayan region.
He said about 200 people in the town had not received any medical help since the 7.6 magnitude quake struck on Oct. 8, and landing choppers there was dangerous because desperate villagers rushed into the landing area.
In the town of Bagh, the bodies of six soldiers killed when their MI-17 transport helicopter crashed in bad weather Saturday were lain into simple wooden coffins for transport back to Islamabad. The remains were located on Sunday but could not be flown back immediately because of the downpours.
On the Indian side of Kashmir, conditions were grim yesterday. Torrential rain and snow turned roads into rivers of mud, stranding trucks loaded with relief supplies for the worst-affected Uri and Tangdhar areas, officials said.
Two strong aftershocks struck early yesterday, including one with a magnitude of 4.5, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
There have been hundreds of aftershocks, and experts say they could continue for months.
Officials on Sunday sharply raised estimates of the dead. Abdul Khaliq Wasi, a spokesman for the local government of Pakistani Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the quake, said at least 40,000 people died there and that the toll could go much higher. Not all the bodies had been counted and the figure represented the "closest estimate," he said.
That pushed estimates of the total death toll to more than 54,000, including more than 13,000 in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and about 1,350 in the part of divided Kashmir that India controls.
Confirmation of a final toll will be difficult because many bodies are buried beneath rubble.
UN officials said that, so far, they were adhering to the Pakistani government's confirmed casualty toll, which was 39,422 dead and 65,038 injured. The UN has estimated that 2 million are homeless.
Helicopter missions in Pakistan resumed yesterday after being grounded for most of Sunday because of heavy rain and thunderstorms, which piled on the distress for the homeless.
Nouak said one of its relief flights to Chekar had to turn back at the weekend because villagers were fighting each other for the supplies.
"They had sticks and they were fighting for relief goods. There was no perimeter security and we felt threatened. There must be a perimeter security while helicopters land," he said.
India gave Pakistan permission to send relief helicopters into the 1.6km-wide no-fly-zone on the Pakistani side of the ceasefire line that divides Kashmir.
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