SANGHAR, Oct 18: The army tore through landslides on Tuesday to reopen an earthquake-ravaged road, the latest route to be restored to remote villages such as Sanghar, cut off from supplies by land for 10 days.

Army bulldozers have been trudging metre by metre through the rocks and mud to reach isolated mountain areas which have been at the mercy of helicopter relief since the earthquake.

On Tuesday, the earth-moving crew finally reached Sanghar, a mountain town some six kilometres north of Balakot, the valley town in North West Frontier Province reduced to a sea of tents.

But there are more villages badly hit by the quake stretching some 30 kilometers from Balakot into the mountains to the north.

The reopening of the road will provide a crucial new conduit of aid into the mountains. Previously only two convoys of mules by the army were able to bring help to Sanghar.

Hundreds of villagers have been making the treacherous journey on foot down to Balakot in search of urgently needed aid, climbing over piles of rubble on a road where no cars could pass.

“I got one bag of rice so I can feed eight people,” Ghulam Nabi, an old bearded man in a red and white turban, said as he trekked back up the mountains from Balakot.

It was the second major road to be cleared in two days. On Monday, bulldozers broke through a huge landslide to reopen the road from Muzaffarabad to the devastated and isolated Jhelum Valley.

Helicopters were also roaring through the sky at a breakneck pace on Tuesday for the second straight day after a weekend of rain that grounded flights, leaving an untold number of stranded survivors to die.

The deputy commissioner of Muzaffarabad, Liaquat Hussain, said the roads were key to sustaining the relief operation after the quake.

“The biggest hurdle is road communication is not available. Even the bridges are gone, so it’s a huge effort that is required to establish the road link,” Mr Hussain said.

The operation is painstakingly slow. On the road to Sanghar, two excavators are in charge of pushing out the mud and rocks which often can only be loosened by planting explosives.

By Monday morning, the army team had only cleared one kilometer of the route to Sanghar as the initial conditions were “extremely difficult,” said soldier Ali Hassan.

The army set off dynamite charges for two controlled explosions on Sunday evening and two more Monday morning to pave the way.

“We have to be very careful as the ground is very unstable. The earth is continuing to shake and it rained a lot over two days which led to even more landslides,” Mr Hassan said.

The slow process has sparked pessimism in many of the survivors.

As villagers brought their wounded by foot down from the mountains, one boy was hiking up with his brother by his side and a big bag of supplies. He said he was walking nine hours to reach his distant hamlet.

“I don’t think the road will ever reopen. We have to keep walking,” he said.—AFP