Bulldozers broke open roads to push into the isolated Himalayas, choppers roared into blue skies and trucks and mules shifted supplies to more than three million people made homeless by the disaster 10 days ago.

But the aid effort was marred by a row between Pakistan and rival India, which turned down a request by Islamabad for helicopters without crews for relief operations.

"It has started snowing in the hills, people are suffering from fever and they are likely to die -- we need tents and blankets immediately," said Yussuf, 36, a farmer from Haryal village who trekked down to Ghari Dupatta after his son died in the quake.

This town was made accessible for the first time since the earthquake after army bulldozers reopened a key road from the Pakistani Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad into the devastated Jhelum Valley.

The army also managed to cut through the rocks and mud to clear the road from the razed northwestern town of Balakot to the mountain town of Sanghar, a crucial outpost for far-flung villages.

But even with around 100 helicopter sorties Tuesday, the head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), James Morris, said that time was running out.

"The aid agencies have managed to give some help to hundreds of thousands of people, but there are an estimated half a million more people out there in desperate need, who no one has managed to reach," Morris said in a statement.

"People don't just need food. First of all they need shelter, blankets and medical assistance -- then food and clean water," Morris said.

He called the operation one of the toughest the international aid community has ever faced. The WFP's own trucks arrived only Monday in Balakot.

There was also a dire prediction from the United Nations that not enough winter tents existed to shelter survivors from the quake, which the government says killed more than 41,000 people in Pakistan alone.

"It is fair to say the indication is that there are not enough tents in the world available to support the requirements," Andrew MacLeod, chief operations officer in the UN emergency response centre in Islamabad, told AFP.

UN spokeswoman Amanda Pitt said the supply of tents had been exhausted in Pakistan, which she said was the world's biggest producer of winter tents.

"The whole thing here is a nightmare. I know it sounds dramatic to say this but it really is a case of nature overwhelming man," Pitt said.

Pakistan also appealed for bigger tents to use as makeshift schools in the coming months. Hundreds of schools collapsed in the quake, killing thousands of children.

Pakistan's disaster response chief, Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan, was on the defensive, saying criticism that relief was not reaching survivors in time was "surprising".

"Life is not galloping as yet but it has started limping," he told a news conference.

He announced an immediate ban on all exports of tents. Pakistan also said it would buy tents urgently from its neighbour India, putting aside rivalries for the sake of housing its huge population of destitute.

But India and Pakistan failed to agree on another aid measure. Pakistan had asked for Indian military helicopters to join the mission to reach thousands of isolated mountain hamlets but said they could not be flown by Indian pilots.

The helicopters would provide vital assistance in quake-hit areas near the military ceasefire line in Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan territory controlled in part by India and Pakistan.

The quake struck amid a nearly two-year-old peace process between Islamabad and New Delhi, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since independence in 1947. India has sent three consignments of relief to Pakistan.

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