Thousands dead in rubble

Desperate Pakistanis huddled in the cold waiting for earthquake aid to reach remote areas.

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- Desperate Pakistanis huddled against the cold and some looted food stores Monday as international aid still had not reached remote areas of mountainous Kashmir after a monster earthquake flattened villages, cut off power and water, and killed tens of thousands.

Officials predict the death toll, now estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000, will climb and fear that more could die from exposure or disease with winter just six weeks away. The United Nations has said 2.5 million people near the Pakistan-India border need shelter.

More than 48 hours after the magnitude-7.6 quake, survivors were still being rescued from under piles of concrete, steel and wood. A man was pulled from a pancaked two-story house in Muzaffarabad, two girls were plucked from a collapsed school in Balakot, and a woman and child were pulled from an apartment building in Islamabad.

Injured people were airlifted from remote areas, and Pakistan's army distributed rice to starving survivors.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who called Saturday's earthquake the country's worst on record, said his government was doing its best to respond to the crisis. He had appealed for international help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides.

"We are doing whatever is humanly possible," Musharraf said. "There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help."

Eight U.S. helicopters -- five Chinook transport choppers and three Blackhawks for heavy lifting -- were diverted from the war in neighboring Afghanistan. They carried supplies, tarpaulins and equipment, including high-tech cameras for finding buried survivors.

"Pakistan is one of our closest allies in the war on terror and we want to help them in this time of crisis," said Sgt. Marina Evans, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Washington pledged up to $50 million in relief and reconstruction aid, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said.

"We have under way the beginning of a very major relief effort," he said.

Pakistan also said it would accept aid from longtime rival India, which promised tents, food, medicine and other aid.

The nations have fought two wars over Kashmir, which both claim as theirs. Pakistan suffered the worst of the damage and casualties, and India reported 865 deaths in its portion of the Himalayan province.

However, Pakistan declined an offer of Indian helicopters to help distribute aid and has ruled out a joint rescue operation along the disputed frontier.

Planeloads of aid arrived from Britain, Japan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Rival India, Russia, China and Germany also offered assistance.

With winter approaching, thousands of Pakistanis who lost their homes huddled in tents and in the open. Many lit fires using wood from collapsed houses.

The capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, was devastated, with at least 11,000 people reported dead. Assistant city commissioner Masood-ur Rehman said 90 percent of the city, and all its government and educational institutions, were destroyed. Relief efforts were hampered by roads buried by landslides.

"Bodies are scattered in the city," he said. "Ninety percent of victims are still buried under the debris. We are helpless. The city is out of order."

In one neighborhood, shopkeepers scuffled with looters scavenging crushed stores for cooking oil, rice, r.

The storeowners and looters fought with large sticks and threw stones, and some looters suffered head wounds. No police were in the area.

"We haven't eaten anything for two or three days. The shops are closed and we haven't got anything from the government," said a 20-year-old man who refused to identify himself as he ferreted away stolen goods.

"We are desperate and hungry."

Residents said looters also targeted deserted homes and gas stations. Survivors lacked food and water amid little sign of any official relief operation in the devastated city of 600,000. Soldiers on an army truck threw bags of rice to a throng of people with outstretched arms.

About 2,000 residents huddled around camp fires on a soccer field at the city's university campus, where hundreds were feared buried in collapsed classrooms and dormitories. Soldiers burrowed into the concrete with shovels and iron bars.

"I don't think anybody is alive in this pile of rubble," rescue worker Uzair Khan said. "But we have not lost hope."

Mohammed Ullah Khan, 50, said a few biscuits handed out by relief workers were his only food for three days. His three-story home collapsed in the quake, but his family of 10 survived because they were on the top floor.

"My children are now on a hillside, under the open sky, with nothing to eat," he said while camping on the soccer field.

A doctor, Iqbal Khan, said survivors were at risk for diarrhea and pneumonia if drinking water and other supplies did not arrive quickly.

An eight-member British team using a body-detecting dog, drills, chain saws and crowbars pulled a 20-year-old tailor from the rubble of a two-story building Monday, 54 hours after it collapsed.

The man, Tariq, was wide-eyed and covered in dust when he emerged, and he begged for water.

"I haven't eaten in three days, but I'm not hungry," said Tariq, who suffered a leg injury and was carried away on a door. He had been trapped beneath concrete and wooden beams, with dead bodies beside him.

In Balakot, a badly hit town in North West Frontier Province, townspeople hearing cries for help broke through a heap of concrete that was once a school and rescued two girls. A crowd pulled to safety the first girl, wearing a green shirt and with a gold bracelet on her arm.

The second girl, a toddler, had scratches on her face. Several men brushed dust from her clothing and gave her water.

"There are many more alive inside, but we can't take them all out because we don't have government efforts here," said Sadan Khattak, a student from Peshawar who was helping rescue efforts.

At another site, an 18-month-old boy was pulled alive from the rubble and given to his sobbing father. The boy was given a box of milk to drink.

Bodies were laid out on a basketball court, while workers with pick axes dug up a playground for use as a mass grave.

In the Pakistani capital, rescuers continued digging through the ruins of what was a 10-story apartment building after pulling the woman and child to safety. Asim Shafik, who was assisting in rescue efforts, said voiced were heard in the rubble, where at least two dozen people died.

Estimates of Pakistan's death toll varied. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said it exceeded 20,000. The top elected official in Kashmir, Sardar Sikandar Hayat, said it was more than 25,000, while the province's communications minister, Tariq Mahmood, said it was more than 30,000.