Afghan President Hamid Karzai brought help yesterday for Pakistani victims of the massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands, as relief workers pulled more corpses from the rubble and the UN warned that 800,000 people remain without shelter.
The US army began setting up a field hospital and Pakistan's army said it planned to send another brigade -- usually about 3,000 soldiers -- to Muzaffarabad, the capital of its portion of Kashmir -- to help in the relief effort and the grueling task of clearing debris, army spokesman Major Farooq Nasir said.
Eighteen more bodies were found in collapsed buildings in the city on Sunday, he said.
PHOTO: AP
Two children from a displaced family suffered burns over 80 percent of their bodies when their tent caught fire in the northern town of Balakot late on Sunday, according to another spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan.
Army helicopters using night vision equipment quickly evacuated them to a military hospital but one, a 12-year-old girl, died yesterday morning from her injuries. The other, a boy about age 7, is in critical condition. Seven other people burned in the fire were shifted to a hospital on Monday. It was unclear what caused the fire.
Aftershocks
Powerful aftershocks were still rattling the region more than two weeks after the 7.6-magnitude temblor wrecked a huge swathe of northern Pakistan and the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, killing an estimated 79,000 people, including 1,360 on the Indian side.
A magnitude-6.0 quake rocked Pakistani-held Kashmir on Sunday. No one was killed in that aftershock, but an earlier tremor on Sunday killed five people in Afghanistan's eastern Zabul Province near the Pakistan border.
The Afghan president arrived in Islamabad yesterday for a one-day visit and talks with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Karzai brought 5 tonnes of medicines and medical equipment, as well as 30 doctors and nurses who will travel to the quake zone, said Rafiullah Mujaddedi, an official in the president's media department.
Some 100 US soldiers arrived in Muzaffarabad yesterday in a 40-vehicle convoy to set up the army's only Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. Three isolation units had to be left behind as the winding road into Kashmir wasn't wide enough, but the MASH still has a capacity for emergency care and operations, and beds or cots for up to 84 patients.
On Sunday, US General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, said the US would step up its relief efforts. He said 11 more Chinook helicopters would join the existing 17 US helicopters flying missions into the quake zone.
In an unusual convergence of appeals, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to send as much aid as they could to quake victims in Pakistan, despite Musharraf's alliance with the US in its war on terrorism.
Al-Qaeda appeal
"You should send as much aid as you can to the victims, regardless of Musharraf's relations with the Americans," Osama bin Laden's deputy said in a recorded message broadcast on al-Jazeera TV.
More than 3 million people are believed homeless after the quake. Rashid Kalikov, UN coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Muzaffarabad, said 800,000 of those people still had no shelter whatsoever, with winter looming.
The tragedy is pushing Pakistan and India to lay aside their differences. The two were inching closer to a deal in which they would overlook their long-standing dispute over Kashmir for the sake of helping the quake victims, allowing them to cross the disputed border.
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