THE calls, just a few at first, began as soon as news of the earthquake broke. By late yesterday, the east London offices of the charity Muslim Aid were inundated with requests from British Pakistanis desperate for information about relatives in the areas hit by the disaster.

‘But there was nothing we could tell them,’ Ebrahisma Mohamed, the charity’s chief executive, told The Observer. ‘In some areas hit by the earthquake, the phones are down. In others, the lines are jammed, and it’s almost impossible to get through.’

The agony of Britain’s nearly one million-strong Pakistani community was intensified by the fact that the great majority have family roots in Kashmir, the remote mountain region worst affected where large areas are beyond the reach of mobile phone or email contact. ‘Whole villages, with houses made of mud, perched on mountainsides, will have been wiped out,’ he said.

Muslim Aid immediately announced it was setting aside £100,000 for emergency assistance, initially to purchase 300 weather poof tents and move them into the areas hit by the earthquake. ‘Winter is coming and the temperatures are dropping,’ said the charity chief. He added that, in partnership with Oxfam, his organisation also hoped to provide food and other necessities, as well as mobile field clinics, to help the survivors.

A British MP visiting Pakistan last night spoke of the terror of being woken up with the walls ‘wobbling’ in the first few seconds after the earthquake struck.

Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, was asleep when the earthquake struck at just before 9am.

‘I was in bed and all of a sudden the whole place was shaking. I mean the walls were wobbling. It was truly frightening,’ he said.

‘I thought the whole place was going to collapse.’

The MP is in Pakistan attending a series of faith conferences and had met the president and prime minister of Pakistan. —Dawn/The Observer News Service