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| October 22, 2005 | Saturday | Ramazan 17, 1426 |
Switzerland to send fourth planeload of aid for Pakistan GENEVA, Oct 22 (AFP) - Switzerland said Saturday that it will send a fourth aircraft with hundreds of tonnes of humanitarian aid to Pakistan, still struggling to help the homeless after a massive earthquake on October 8. The Antonov plane will leave on Sunday for the devastated region transporting a mobile hospital, tents, blankets and stoves, said Jean-Philippe Jutzi, a spokesman for the Swiss agency for development and cooperation (SDC).(Posted @ 20:42 PST)
Pakistan makes formal Kashmir LoC proposal to India ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (AFP) - Pakistan formally handed over details of President Pervez Musharraf's plan to open the LoC in disputed Kashmir and let people cross to help out quake-stricken relatives, the foreign ministry said Saturday. "In pursuance of the proposal made by the president on 18 October 2005 to facilitate two-way movement of Kashmiris across the Line of Control (LoC), Pakistan has formally proposed the modalities to the government of India," the ministry said in a statement.(Posted @ 20:38 PST)
India plans Kashmiri relief centres to open to Pakistani side NEW DELHI, Oct 22 (AFP) India said Saturday that it plans to set up three relief centres on the LoC which will provide medical and other assistance to people from Pakistan's zone. The Indian government has approached Islamabad with the proposal and is awaiting a response, foreign affairs spokesman Navtej Sarna told a media conference here. "People from across the Line of Control will be allowed to come in during daylight hours after suitable screening and then return," Sarna said. They will have access to food, clothing and medical relief and will be allowed to meet with family members living in the Indian zone, he added.(Posted @ 17:50 PST)
Kashmiri leader says he will cross LoC to help quake victims SRINAGAR, Oct 22 (AFP) Kashmiri leader Nayeem Khan said Saturday he and his supporters would cross the Line of Control(LoC) from the Indian zone next week to help earthquake survivors in Azad Kashmir in order to rebuild their homes and lives, despite the no go ahead from the Indian authorities. "I will lead the first batch of my activists to Azad (Free) Kashmir via Lalpul on October 25," said Khan, who heads National Front. "There is no need to ask for any permission from India. We are going for a noble cause. If Pakistan has any objection to our visit we will not go," Khan said. Khan said he would give an undertaking in writing to the Indian authorities that he and all his activists would return after accomplishing their job.(Posted @ 17:42 PST)
Mules to the rescue in quake-hit Kashmir SHAHEED GHALI, Pakistan, Oct 22 (Reuters) With roads still blocked by landslides in northern Pakistan and winter coming on, mules are one of the only ways to get emergency supplies to cut off mountain villages. But like everything else after the disaster, they are in short supply. On Saturday, a train of more than 40 mules set off from the village of Shaeed Ghali high above Muzaffarabad to settlements on mountain ridges where helicopters cannot land. They were carrying enough food from the U.N. World Food Programme to feed 2,000 people for a week, but with hundreds of villages cut off, this remains a drop in the ocean. WFP spokeswoman Mia Turner said the Pakistani army had said it was bringing 50 more mules into the disaster zone and 48 more were at work in the Balakot area of adjoining North West Frontier Province. "The problem is getting mules here, there's a shortage," she said as porters loaded the animals with sacks of flour and pulses and tinned supplies from Japan and USAID. The mule train loaded at Shaheed Ghali was brought together by Jamaat ud Daawa, an aid group linked to the banned militant organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba, which rented the animals from farmers. A Jamaat spokesman Yahya found it ironic that the group's workers were loading sacks of U.S. flour onto mules they had supplied. "The Americans call us terrorists but they are working with us,” he said.(Posted @ 17:12 PST)
Britain sends military helicopters to quake region LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) Britain sent the first of three giant helicopters to Pakistan on Saturday to help in the relief effort. Britain's Defence Secretary John Reid said the Chinook helicopters will be used to fly aid to survivors of the earthquake who were cut off because of landslides in the mountainous terrain. Latest estimates were that more than 2,000 villages have yet to be reached by rescue teams. A further two Chinooks, which can carry up to 54 people or 10 tonnes of freight, will leave Britain on Sunday.(Posted @ 17:08 PST)
Pakistan quake killed 53,182: official ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (AFP) "The casualty figures are now 53,182 dead and 75,146 injured," Pakistan's disaster relief chief, Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan, told a news conference on Saturday. A day earlier he gave a toll of 51,300 dead and 74,500 injured, raising the death toll by nearly 2,000.(Posted @ 17:02 PST)
UN says quake donors turned off by lack of video footage ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (AFP) The world has tuned out from the plight of Pakistan's quake victims because unlike the Asian tsunami and September 11, there were no graphic videos of the calamity, a UN official said Saturday. Jan Vandemoortele, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Pakistan, said 'donor fatigue' after recent disasters like the December 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina was also probably responsible for the poor global response. "A difference also is that we didn't get footage of the disaster," Vandemoortele told reporters. "We saw the tsunami happening, we saw the airplanes flying into the Twin Towers in New York, these impact on the minds of people," he added. "Here we only see the consequences. This is definitely one of the reasons the response has been slow and inadequate so far." The relief effort needs up to 200,000 more tents, 50 more helicopters and extra sanitation equipment, and has to get enough food near cut-off mountain areas to feed one million people for six months, Vandemoortele said. "The scarcest commodity at this time is time. Money cannot buy time, and the weather is against us and winter is closing in," he told a news conference in Islamabad. "Will we succeed? We can only say that we will do our best and we are in the hands of the international community, we have to keep the pipeline alive," he added. (Posted @ 14:50 PST)
World Bank will step up aid to Pakistan for quake recovery HELSINKI, Oct 22 (AFP) The World Bank will significantly increase aid to Pakistan to help reconstruct regions devastated by the October 8 earthquake, its president Paul Wolfowitz said here Saturday. "We have already said we expect our contribution to grow significantly, especially in the reconstruction phase," Wolfowitz said. "Frankly right now, the scale of the disaster is so enormous, the fact is that big part of the effort has to go find out what the needs really are. Some precision about needs is actually quite important at this stage. My impression is that the government in Pakistan is doing everything that is humanly possible and the money is not the constraint at the moment but there is going to be a lot of help, probably to the tune of several billion dollars and I am sure there is going to be an upward generosity," he added. (Posted @ 14:50 PST)
Tent industry working in full gear ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (APP): Tent manufacturing industry in Pakistan is working round the clock and it is expected that the initial requirement of the quake affected people would be fulfilled in the coming two weeks, Voice of America reported. (Posted @ 13:25 PST)
6 battalions working round the clock to restore road links: DG ISPR ISLAMABAD, Oct 22 (APP): Director General Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Maj. General Shaukat Sultan on Saturday said that at least 6 battalions of Pakistan army are busy round the clock to restore the roads network in quake-affected areas of Azad Kashmir and NWFP.Relief goods are transported through vehicles to the areas where roads have been opened and then are shifted to inaccessible areas by the army jawans on animals, the DG ISPR told a private television channel. He said the people staying over high mountains' tops are being requested to come down to the areas accessible through road for the time being. "Our target is to provide shelter to all and sundry in the affected areas in next two weeks before the advent of winter," he said. (Posted @ 13:25 PST)
Two weeks on, many quake survivors still cut off MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct 22 (Reuters) - "At the moment, the emphasis is on the need for road engineers. If we can open the roads, that would solve everything," World Food Programme spokeswoman Mia Turner said Saturday. "More than 2,000 villages have to be reached and they have to be reached by roads," she said as more mule trains set off up into the hills from Muzaffarabad. They are laden with food and, most crucially, tents. More than 74,000 people are known to have been injured and opening the roads would also allow the many, many more in cut-off villages to get medical treatment without which they face death, she stressed. The Pakistani army is working around the clock to open roads broken, covered by landslides or swept away by the Oct. 8 quake. Lieutenant-General Salahuddin Satti said he hoped the road up Jhelum valley would be re-opened in a week, but it would take six weeks for the nearby Neelum valley. (Posted @ 12:50 PST)
Pakistan quake survivors fight over food KACHILI, Azad Kashmir, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Incidents of people attacking and looting aid trucks in parts of earthquake-stricken Azad Kashmir are growing, witnesses say. Mohammad Ishaq Khan of Lahore complained that he sent two truckloads of food and tents to his village from Lahore but these were looted in broad daylight before they got there. Another witness reported seeing 100 men and women fighting one another with sticks and tree branches over flour dropped off by World Food Programme trucks on a mountain road on Thursday night. Nearby, rocks had been strewn across the road in an apparent effort to halt trucks so they could be looted, he said. There are few police to keep order because they suffered as much as anyone else in the devastation. Locals allege that influential people and their followers are leading the grab for aid dropped by helicopters which falls all too readily into the hands of the tough. The WFP estimates more than 2,000 mountain villages are yet to receive help. Although helicopters are delivering everything they can, they cannot reach everywhere and relief workers are using mules to carry supplies. (Posted @ 12:35 PST)
POL: Two JI volunteers martyred, 15 injured in NWFP relief mission LAHORE Oct 21-(PPI): Two volunteers of Jamaat-e-Islami’s Al-Khidmat group have so far been killed and 15 others wounded during the course of relief operation in inaccessible areas of quake affected areas of the NWFP,secretary-general of provincial JI and in-charge of Mansehra Relief Operations said in a press statement. He did not give details. (Posted @ 10:35 PST)
U.S. Mobile Hospital due today WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (APP)- The United States has begun deploying a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH), with final delivery scheduled for Saturday (October 22), says an update on relief activities in vhe earthquake hit areas of Pakistan. (Posted @ 10:35 PST)
Choppers failing to reach Pakistan quake victims MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Oct 22 (AFP) - Massive cargo helicopters are engaged in a herculean effort to deliver relief goods to millions left homeless after Pakistan's massive October 8 earthquake but there are countless villages where no relief or aid workers have reached yet. A simple appeal scribbled on a page of a torn notepad offers a glimpse of the nightmarish conditions the survivors and injured are still facing. "Our village is too far from the road. There are no facilities left. All the houses are destroyed . Many people are dead and injured. Please help us.”"No help has reached us in Shakrian village," says the note handed to passing vehicles by a man who said he walked for days to reach the highway near the town of Ghari Dhopatta, some 20 kilometers east of Muzaffarbad. Relief agencies and NGOs admit logistical problems are hampering efforts to reach help to hundreds of destroyed villages. "We only have a few helicopters being shared for medical missions and to deliver necessities," says ICRC’s Olivier Moeckli. Besides, many distribution centres are also disorganized and overwhelmed.The situation remains dire two weeks after the earthquake which killed over 50,000, injured 74,500, and rendered homeless more than three million men, women and children. (Posted @ 10:05 PST)
Pakistan quake refugees pour out of disaster zone MANSEHRA, Pakistan, Oct 22 (AFP) - Hundreds of refugees fleeing the town of Balakot, which was almost completely destroyed by the October 8 earthquake, arrive here every day as survivors seek shelter from the approaching winter. They come on foot or crowded into buses, carrying whatever they have managed to salvage from the rubble or gather from relief agencies, and say prayers in the town's madrassas. One such survivor, Mirzan, said he had walked for two days with his young son to reach Mansehra, 60 kilometres north of Islamabad. In front of the main hospital in Mansehra, itself cracked and damaged by the quake, a small tent city has been set up to welcome the stragglers from Balakot.Even so the authorities seem overwhelmed by the influx of desperate refugees. "Since October 8 more than 35,000 people have migrated from the region of Balakot. They are staying with their relatives or in tents and if they can't find anywhere to stay they go on to other towns," said a doctor at the hospital. All around, injured people lie in the open air, protecting themselves from the sun with old newspapers or examining the X-Rays of their fractures. Parents, themselves injured, carry bandaged children in their arms. And they continue to arrive, some pushing mules with bundles of belongings strapped to their backs. Almost every space in the town is already occupied. (Posted @ 09:45 PST)
