MUZAFFARABAD, Dec 4: Harsh winter weather is threatening to cut off more than 300,000 earthquake survivors in the NWFP and Azad Kashmir from critical food supplies while heavy rains, causing contamination of water in a village here, have led to the death of six infants during last three days.

“About 250,000 people are at risk of being cut off from food in the NWFP and between 50,000 and 70,000 are vulnerable in Kashmir,” said Amjad Jamal, a spokesman UN’s World Food Programme, in Islamabad.

Ahead of the foul weather, the WFP had positioned nearly 10,000 tons of emergency food at base camps in Kashmir and surrounding areas to feed those who could not get to food or who ran out, he added.

Many quake survivors couldn't prepare for winter as they normally would because they spent the summer rebuilding their homes or because they were financially ruined, Jamal said.

The WFP has stockpiled food to help those people and has also procured five helicopters to airlift the sick or deliver emergency goods.

''We are very much ready to take care of them,'' Jamal said. ''We will try to cope with the situation as soon as it arises.''

Another 36,000 are still in refugee camps at lower altitudes receiving WFP aid. But rain and cold are already making life miserable for survivors.

And a doctor visiting the village of Thaniyan, near the epicentre of the last year’s quake, said six infants suffering from pneumonia and acute diarrhoea had died there since Saturday. Three of the infants died on Monday alone.

“It would be premature to call it an epidemic but obviously the ratio is alarming. It's a small village,” said Dr Abdul Waheed, speaking by telephone from the village northwest of Muzaffarabad.

Dr Waheed, who is working with the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) aid agency, said the heavy rain appeared to have led to contamination of water in the village.

That, plus the cold, had led to the deaths of the children, he said.

A Reuters photographer, heading up into the mountains on Monday, said he saw many people coming down, some carrying children, bound for Muzaffarabad.

District health official Sardar Mahmood Ahmed said three of the children died on Monday while 10 others from their village were being treated for stomach pains, vomiting and diarrhea.

Meanwhile at a camp in Mera Tanolian, also north of Islamabad, rain was pouring through the tents of refugees, who were still awaiting long-promised steel shelters from the government.

''Our tent is old and torn. One year has passed and we have not adequate shelter,'' said Zulekha Bibi, a 50-year-old mother of six children who huddled near her cooking fire.

Half of Bibi's tent floor was soaked in rain water, making the plunging temperatures nearly unbearable at night, she said.

Late last month, a UN-sponsored survey conducted by the International Organisation for Migration showed that more than half the survivors still living in refugee camps can't go home because they don't have land to return to, underlining one of the last hurdles facing recovery efforts.

Landslides or floods simply washed away the places where many of the remaining refugees had lived, while others can't return because of medical problems, the survey showed.—Agencies