January 18, 2006	Wednesday	Zilhaj 17, 1426

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MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 17: Relief flights remained suspended in the quake-hit areas for the third consecutive day on Tuesday as rain and snowfall continued to play havoc with homeless survivors. “Helicopters are not flying today because there is no change in weather,” military spokesman Major Farooq Nasir said.

Local authorities placed high security around American army’s mobile surgical hospital in Muzaffarabad early in Tuesday morning in anticipation of former US president George Bush’s visit to the devasted state capital. However, the visit did not take place ostensibly due to bad weather.

The roads leading to the Jhelum and Neelum valleys remained closed due to landslides at several spots.

“The army and civil officials, who are duly equipped with earth removing machines, have been placed near most of the landslides to keep roads clear but incessant rains have rendered them helpless,” Major Nasir said.

Two people were killed and three others wounded on Monday when rocks fell on them from mountainside as they were crossing a massive landslide in Badhiara village, some 24 kilometres south of here.

The casualties, however, could not deter desperate survivors from walking over landslides as men and women, carrying luggage and young children on their backs, continued to walk over heaps of boulders and earth to reach their destinations amid heavy downpour.

“I have walked 4 kilometres on foot because I had some urgent work in Muzaffarabad. The journey was really terrible,” Ghulam Mustafa, a 65 year old white-bearded survivor from Batmang village, told this correspondent as he crossed a landslide near Kamsar camp on the north-eastern Neelum valley road.

“I hardly escaped wounds as rocks and earth fell many a time from the mountainside as I walked through the treacherous track,” said Mir Hassan, 55, another survivor from the same village.

A notice board erected by the highways department before the first landslide warned motorists and pedestrians to remain careful and cooperate with the road clearing personnel while driving or walking through the single track carved out of the stony mountains.

Local meteorological office said Muzaffarabad had received about 35 millimetre rainfall in the past twenty four hours.

“It will continue to rain during the next twenty-four hours with snowfall in the mountains,” senior observer Gul Akhtar Zuberi said, adding that minimum temperature in the town was 3 degree Celsius.

Unrelenting rains compounded worries of the survivors and turned their squalid camps into marshy fields.

“We are shivering with cold as there is no let-up in rains. If it does not stop raining, the conditions will become worst for us all,” said Azeema Bibi in one of the camps.

Major Nasir said the authorities were distributing a new load of 18,000 talc sheets among the survivors to help them make their tents water proof.

But survivors said rains were so intense that even these sheets could not stop leakage.

However, despite harsh weather, health officials said there was no unusual increase in the number of patients suffering from cold-related diseases.

“Thanks to Allah, the situation is under control,” said Dr Bashir ur Rehman Kanth, executive director of Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences.