ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: The first Nato flight has arrived in Islamabad carrying urgent supplies for quake victims from UNHCR’s warehouse in Turkey. Up to five more Nato flights were expected to arrive at Islamabad on Thursday.

A British C-130 transport plane arrived on Wednesday night at Chaklala military airport in Islamabad with five pallets of tents and one pallet of blankets for earthquake survivors. Later in the day, several French and Greek C-130s were scheduled to follow in a major airlift out of the Nato base in Turkey, carrying over 25 tonnes of urgently needed relief supplies to Pakistan.

The flights kick off a new joint Nato-UNHCR airlift supported by the Turkish government from Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey that will altogether ferry some 860 tonnes of aid from the UN refugee agency’s regional warehouse in nearby Iskenderun. In all, the Nato/UNHCR airlift out of Turkey will deliver nearly 10,000 family tents, around 104,000 blankets and 2,000 stoves.—Online