MUZAFFARABAD, Nov 3: Rescuers tried on Thursday to reach dozens of villages left without any aid since last month’s quake as survivors marked the last day of the holy month of Ramazan.

International and Pakistani helicopters made renewed attempts to get to devastated areas that were cut off by the Oct 8 quake.

“The problem is of means of transportation, that’s why we are trying and appealing to the international community to come and help us with choppers,” Pakistani army Brigadier Zafar Ali told AFP in Muzaffarabad, the shattered capital of Azad Kashmir.

Aid officials have warned that thousands more may die unless survivors in remote mountain hamlets get more food and shelter before the Himalayan winter starts in a few weeks.

The United Nations has appealed for rich nations to donate more cash, saying they have received less than a quarter of what they need for immediate emergency aid.

In Muzaffarabad, streets wore a deserted look a day before Eidul Fitr.

“What is Eid?” Nasima Bibi, whose 18-year-old son Mustafa died in the quake, told AFP as she cleared the young man’s simple grave.

“I lost my house, I lost my eldest son who was going to be breadwinner because my husband is ill. What does this Eid mean for me?” she said, breaking down in tears.

Instead many residents in the city, where tens of thousands died, said they would be too busy scrabbling for relief goods to celebrate the festival.

“We will not celebrate Eid simply because most of our brethren in the town have suffered, there are too many losses, physical and financial. We can’t celebrate with any kind of fanfare,” said elderly Ejaz Hussein, whose house is too badly damaged to live in.

Many of the open-air venues where people would traditionally offer Eid prayers are now home to tent villages. The quake left more than three million homeless and hundreds of thousands still have no shelter.

However 1,000 students from the youth wing of Jamaat-i-Islami came to Muzaffarabad on Thursday to distribute gifts and toys to child survivors.

In held Kashmir where more than 1,300 people died in the quake, people said they would mark Eid by praying that they survive the freezing months ahead rather than in celebration.

“To celebrate Eid we require money to buy new clothes, meat and other items. I do not have a single paisa now,” said Akbar Din, a farm labourer from quake-flattened Salamabad village, 105km northwest of Srinagar.

Relief efforts got a small boost on Thursday when the Indian army said the “peace bus” road linking Srinagar and Muzaffarabad has been reopened after it was blocked by landslides, allowing faster delivery of supplies.

However the helicopter aid flights nearly suffered a serious blow on Tuesday when the US military said a rocket-propelled grenade had been fired at one of its machines. Pakistan said the crew mistook a dynamite blast for an attack.

Relief helicopters from the United States as well as the United Nations and a number of foreign countries took to the air again as the US and Pakistani militaries continued to investigate the incident.

SHELTER: As many as 200,000 tents are needed to shelter survivors of the earthquake, the United Nations said on Thursday.

According to Bloomberg, “Shelter remains the overriding priority,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said. “In addition, food aid is required for more than two million people.”

Progress is being made on the ground to aid survivors, many of them in remote areas that are inaccessible to helicopters.

The death toll rose from 57,000 after rescue teams reached areas that were inaccessible earlier. An estimated 3.2 million to 3.5 million people are in need of medical care and 3.2 million were left homeless by the 7.6 magnitude earthquake, the UN said.

Less than a quarter of the $550 million needed for aid emergency programs has been pledged by donor nations, OCHA said.

“Many agencies fear that operations will come to a halt if no additional funding is received in coming days,” OCHA said. Pledges currently amount to $131 million, it said.

“UN agencies have used their own reserves to get things moving,” OCHA said. “Some have borrowed heavily.”

The US has sent 24 helicopters and about 890 military personnel supporting relief operations, Brigadier General Carter F. Ham, director for regional operations in the office of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. Nine helicopters may be sent soon from Afghanistan, Ham said.

“Other airlift operations have continued and will continue”, Ham said.—Agencies

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