Anger and looting erupted over the speed of the massive relief effort as hundreds of thousands of people, many left hungry and homeless by the quake's destruction, awaited help from rescuers battling difficult conditions.

More than 48 hours after the 7.6-magnitude quake wiped away entire villages and buried victims under piles of debris, the full scope of the devastation - and the enormous cost in human lives - began to emerge.

"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas," Pakistani army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP. A senior official said the quake had killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people in the mountains of northeast Pakistan, and injured another 60,000.

The quake centred its fury in northern Pakistan and Pakistani-held Kashmir, a mountainous region where untold numbers of children were entombed when schools and houses collapsed under the worst quake to hit Pakistan in decades.

The huge international rescue effort that has swept into Pakistan has been severely hampered by the treacherous terrain and huge quake-triggered landslides that wiped out many roads, even though some reopened Monday.

"We are not mourning our dead today. We are mourning our ties with the government," said magistrate Raja Mohammad Irshad, in the remote town of Bagh. He lost a sister-in-law, three nephews and two cousins.

"We are asking whether they think we are human beings or animals, or non-living things," he said.

In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-held Kashmir, people ransacked military trucks that had just arrived and took food, tents, blankets and medicines, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

One group broke into a petrol station to get fuel to burn wood for cooking and warmth, while others snatched government cars and jeeps.

"People are starving. They have lost all their family members, their belongings," local resident Akram Shah told AFP. "Everything is gone, people are buried alive. Nobody is helping us to find them."

An AFP reporter who flew over Pakistani-held Kashmir in a military helicopter described scenes of utter devastation. The ground was littered with the ruins of demolished houses.

In open fields, hundreds of people waited for help beside the dead and wounded.

Residents in some places dug with their bare hands to find their loved ones, while rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialist equipment hunted for survivors and set up field hospitals to cope with the injured.

Rescuers in the Pakistani capital Islamabad received a morale boost when an Iraqi woman and her two-year-old son were pulled alive shortly before midnight Monday from the wreckage of an apartment building where they were trapped for 60 hours, a government official said.

Offers of aid continued to pour in from around the world. The United States said it had provided 50 million dollars, the World Bank offered 20 million dollars and the Asian Development Bank pledged 10 million dollars. The energy-rich Gulf states of Kuwait and United Arab Emirates offered 200 million dollars to countries struck by the earthquake.

Survivors were facing an array of problems -- freezing overnight temperatures, rain, landslides, scarce food, little shelter, no communications networks and almost non-existent healthcare.

The United Nations said more helicopters were needed urgently to bring aid to the hardest-hit villages, most of which are nestled on hard-to-reach forested slopes 10,000 feet (3,300 metres) high in the foothills of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, said Pakistan had deployed its own substantial fleet of helicopters, but that the scale of the disaster required more choppers and small fixed-wing aircraft.

The United States responded by offering eight military helicopters -- five twin-rotor Chinooks and three Blackhawks based in neighbouring Afghanistan -- and two C-130 aircraft loaded with tents, blankets and other relief supplies.

Afghanistan also said it would send four military helicopters, medical teams and three tonnes (tons) of medicine.

Pakistan confirmed it had also accepted an offer of aid from neighbouring nuclear rival India, with which it has fought two wars over disputed Kashmir.

Indian officials said more than 950 people had been killed in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir, which is claimed in entirety by both nations.

India's military, heavily deployed along the de facto border with Pakistan, have taken the lead in the relief work on the Indian side.

Indian army teams were trekking through rugged terrain in the two worst-hit northern areas of Uri and Tangdar, but many villages remained cut off. An estimated 5,000 homes were flattened.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Related Links
TerraDaily
Search TerraDaily
Subscribe To TerraDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only