The Azad Jammu Kashmir channel is being relaunched from a makeshift tin shelter built on the ruins of its former office in the regional capital Muzaffarabad, general manager Ijaz Ahmed Niazi told AFP Wednesday.

Azad Jammu and Kashmir is the official name for Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, which is divided with nuclear rival India. "Azad" means "free" in Urdu.

The station will initially broadcast programmes for two hours a day "to boost the morale of quake affectees and provide information about rebuilding process," Niazi said.

Pakistani Kashmir's prime minister Sardar Atiq Ahmad Khan will inaugurate the transmission, he said.

Three of the station's employees died in the 7.6-magnitude South Asia earthquake on October 5, 2005, which killed more than 75,000 people and made more than 3.3 million homeless.

Most of the victims were in Pakistani Kashmir and northwest Pakistan, although around 1,300 people died in Indian Kashmir and two others in Afghanistan.

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