UN: The United Nations has warned of a second wave of deaths from the south Asian earthquake that killed nearly 47,000 people in Pakistan earlier this month, unless significantly more aid was provided immediately.
"We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami [ last December] was the worst we could get. This is worse," Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, said in Geneva yesterday.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, confirmed these fears and called for the global relief effort to be stepped up to help some three million people made homeless by the October 8th earthquake, mostly across Pakistan's mountainous Kashmir region.
He said donors had only made firm commitments for 12 per cent of the $312 million (€261 million)pledged funds and warned that it was a race against time to save lives as the homeless faced the dire prospect of braving the imminent winter cold without adequate shelter, food, medicines, fuel or blankets.
Tens of thousands of tents were required urgently to house the destitute before the onset of the cold weather in a few weeks, but there were not adequate numbers across the world to meet Pakistani demands.
Many regions in Pakistan-administered Kashmir were still cut off from relief while thousands injured in the quake are still unable to reach hospitals, languishing in agony in remote hill dwellings. Many of their wounds had turned gangrenous, necessitating amputation.
Most such cases involved children. The UN children's agency, Unicef warned that another 10,000 infants could die in addition to the enormous number who had already perished, if relief efforts were not boosted.
The Pakistani government is continuing to appeal to the global community for additional helicopters, the only means to reach far-flung quake-hit regions.
The UK finally consented to send two helicopters nearly a fortnight after the disaster struck.
Mr Annan said in the worst-affected regions, hospitals, schools, water systems and roads had all been destroyed and the difficult, often precipitous terrain made it one of the most challenging relief operations ever undertaken.
"We have one of the best organised relief operations going here but we are just not getting the funding," the UN's chief relief co-ordinator in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Andrew McLeod, said.
Meanwhile, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are warning that the earthquake may have shifted thousands of landmines planted by Indian and Pakistani troops along their disputed line of control that divides Kashmir between the rival neighbours.