ABOARD A MILITARY HELICOPTER: Seen from the air, whole towns in northern Pakistan look as if they have been carpet bombed. The military helicopter flew low over the areas worst hit by Saturday’s earthquake to reveal the full scale of what Pakistan describes as its worst ever disaster.

After lifting off from Islamabad the chopper flew to remote Bagh in Azad Kashmir. The town was partially intact but damage was clearly visible in several neighbourhoods.

Flying on towards Muzaffarabad, the main town in the region, the forested mountains and steep-sided valley were littered with the ruins of demolished houses.

Muzaffarabad itself, which the military says is the quake’s “ground zero”, was a scene of utter devastation.

Row after row of collapsed houses flashed by beneath the helicopter while huge red and green roofs were all that was left of what were apparently schools and public buildings.

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

The normally frothy white water of the Neelum and Jehulm rivers, whose confluence the city sits on, was muddied with debris shaken loose by the 7.6 magnitude quake.

Newly opened fissures and huge cracks were seen in the mountains surrounding Muzaffarabad. As the helicopter hovered over the battered city the pilot pointed downwards to indicate another tremor.

The chopper then flew on to Balakot, a once lively northwestern town near the epicentre of the quake which is at the gateway to the scenic Kaghan Valley tourist area.

Not a single building looked undamaged. Two big hotels on the bank of river’s downstream had been completely razed to the ground.

Hundreds of people were stranded and appeared in extremely bad shape. Part of the road leading to Balakot had been washed away and long rows of cars were parked at the spot while people walked towards it.

Throughout the journey there had been little signs of any of the help so desperately needed by the estimated five million people in the swathe of Pakistan devastated by the quake.

The enormity of the survivors’ needs was plain in Balakot.

As the helicopter touched down on a raised platform strewn with bricks, dozens of desperate people ran through the ruins of the town and gathered around begging for help.

The crowd grew so rapidly that the pilot ordered the journalists who had disembarked to report on the devastation to immediately get back into the chopper.

It then flew off, leaving the people of Balakot in a cloud of dust.—AFP