PAKISTAN: Pakistan yesterday shifted its efforts from rescuing survivors to recovering bodies and rebuilding stricken areas, even as the fate of thousands of people living in remote mountain hamlets in the country's earthquake-ravaged northeastern region remained unknown.
Army troops still cannot reach parts of the Neelum valley which remains cut off by landslides after Saturday's 7.6 magnitude earthquake that has claimed over 35,000 lives.
"We are losing a race against the clock in getting to the small villages," said top UN aid official Jan Egeland, urging the international community to deploy additional helicopters - the only means of reaching the remoter areas - and give money generously.
Meanwhile, thousands of an estimated 2.3 million people made homeless by the tremors, streamed into the five tented cities equipped with food and electricity that authorities have set up near the capital, Islamabad, and the adjoining garrison town of Rawalpindi.
But many dazed survivors would not leave, determined to stay on in the rubble, despite food shortages and winter's arrival.
Pakistani officials said utilities such as electricity and water had been restored in parts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir region, the hardest hit by the quake.
From daybreak, helicopters flew in and out of the flattened city's Neelum sports stadium where there a temporary field hospital has been set up.
Some 20 helicopters have been lent to the aid effort, including eight by the US, but it is not enough. The UN estimates that it will cost billions of dollars over five to 10 years to rebuild the ravaged region and has called for more international aid.
Mr Egeland said only $50 million (€41.4 million) had been pledged of the $272 million the UN asked for earlier in the week.
"This is a good start, but it is not enough. We need more money from more nations," the UN official said.
The US, meanwhile, wants to revive its battered image in the Muslim world by diverting eight heavy lift Chinook helicopters from the war on terrorism in neighbouring Afghanistan and has promised to send another two dozen soon.
The US military's eagerness to escort journalists, especially TV crews, on its sorties into the quake zone suggests it understands the public relations potential in the Muslim world.
The Chinooks have no stars and stripes and the nine crew members in each chopper barely disembark during their work, maintaining minimal contact with the locals they are helping.
Pakistan's government is a strong US ally in the war on terrorism. Yet its 150 million predominantly Muslim people deeply resent the US, a sentiment that has deepened after the invasion of Iraq two years ago.