RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) -- The United Nations warned that 800,000 people remain without shelter more than two weeks after South Asia's colossal quake, and repeated its urgent appeal for more aid. As powerful aftershocks continued to rattle the region, a top U.S. commander said the United States would step up its relief efforts.
In an unusual convergence of appeals, al Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to send as much aid as they could to quake victims in Pakistan, despite President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's alliance with the United States in its war on terrorism.
Meanwhile, Pakistan and India inched closer to a deal in which they would put aside their long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region for the sake of helping the quake victims, allowing them to cross the disputed border.
The need to speed up relief efforts took on greater resonance Sunday as a powerful aftershock -- one of hundreds since the October 8 temblor -- rocked Pakistani-held Kashmir, the region hardest hit by the initial quake. No one was killed in that aftershock, but an earlier tremor Sunday killed five people in Afghanistan's eastern Zabul province near the Pakistan border.
U.S. Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, after a tour of the quake zone Sunday said he "saw devastation everywhere" and that 11 more Chinook helicopters would join the existing 17 U.S. helicopters and the Army's only Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH, in relief efforts.
"I think the most important thing we can do is, by our own example, show the rest of the world that there's a lot more work that needs to be done," he told reporters at the Pakistani air base in Rawalpindi, outside Islamabad.
"It's not something that can just be forgotten, it can't be the five-second sound bite that we're all so used to, it has to be a long-term effort to help a lot of people."
Abizaid was joined by an unusual bedfellow in calling for more aid.
"You should send as much aid as you can to the victims, regardless of Musharraf's relations with the Americans," Osama bin Laden's deputy, al-Zawahri, said in a recorded message broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV.
The 7.6-magnitude October 8 quake is believed to have killed at least 79,000 people, mostly in Pakistani Kashmir, and left more than 3 million homeless.
Rashid Kalikov, U.N. coordinator for humanitarian assistance in Muzaffarabad, said 800,000 of those people still had no shelter whatsoever, with winter looming.
"The lives of thousands are at risk and they urgently need our help," Kalikov said. "The scale of this calamity is beyond the capacity of any country."
India has provided tons of relief goods to its neighbor and traditional rival, but has been moving ahead cautiously with proposals from Pakistan that Kashmiris be allowed to cross between the two nation's zones in Kashmir -- a region claimed in its entirety by both.
Opening the border is particularly sensitive for New Delhi, which has fenced and fortified the so-called Line of Control to prevent infiltration by Islamic militants who fight Indian security forces, seeking Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.
Instead, India has proposed opening three aid camps for Pakistani quake victims on its side but signaled Sunday that it could work with Islamabad's suggestions.
"It appears to us that the proposals made by Pakistan can be reconciled with those that we ourselves had already made," Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said in a statement in New Delhi.
Pakistan's top relief official, Maj. Gen. Farooq Ahmed Khan, said Sunday the official quake toll is now more than 53,000 dead and 75,000 injured, though central figures have lagged behind regional ones. Figures from officials in the North West Frontier Province and Pakistan's part of Kashmir add up to about 78,000. India reported 1,360 deaths in its part of Kashmir.
No comments:
Post a Comment