Aftershocks rock Pakistan
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Strong aftershocks rocked earthquake-shattered northern Pakistan on Wednesday morning, but there were no immediate reports of more deaths or injuries.
A 5.8 magnitude quake at 7.33 a.m. (10:33 p.m. EDT Tuesday), the strongest of dozens of aftershocks since an October 8 earthquake devastated Pakistani
Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province, caused landslides and sent people into the streets.
A second aftershock nearly as strong at 5.6 magnitude followed at 8.16 a.m., but there was no great panic. The tremors were also felt across the frontier in Indian Kashmir.
"I can see some landslides caused by the aftershocks in the nearby mountains, but there are no immediate reports of casualties," Lieutenant-Colonel Saeed Iqbal told Reuters from the ruined NWFP town of Balakot.
But landslides are what army engineers fear most, especially in Pakistani Kashmir's Neelum and Jhelum valleys where countless people remain cut off from help because roads were destroyed in one of the worst natural disasters Pakistan has suffered.
Officers in charge of efforts to cut through the landslides say it will take weeks to reach the upper Neelum valley, in desperate need of aid in large quantities which helicopters cannot deliver. The new landslides could delay this further.
Earthquake survivors in Pakistan had woken up on Wednesday to hope that old enemy India would let their kinfolk cross a ceasefire line to help them after President Pervez Musharraf made a surprise offer to allow free relief movement across the border for Kashmiris.
India agreed promptly, but there was no immediate word on when the two sides would sit down to work how it could be implemented.
"We will allow every Kashmiri to come across the Line of Control and assist in the reconstruction effort," Musharraf said as Pakistan's toll rose to 42,000 from a quake which left more than a million homeless and 67,000 injured.
India itself also suffered in the quake, with at least 1,300 confirmed dead on the Indian side of the border. But roads are badly damaged and so is a bridge at the solitary border crossing, so it was not immediately clear how long it would take to set up any movement across the frontier.
PEACE PROCESS
Musharraf said late on Tuesday he also wanted to ease the way for political leaders on both sides to visit and interact as part of the drive to resurrect what is now a death zone.
A well-known separatist leader, who wants Kashmir independent of both New Delhi and Islamabad, endorsed Musharraf's proposal.
"Kashmiris want to help their brethren," said Yasin Malik, head of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) in Indian Kashmir.
"I have already said politics should take a back seat and Kashmiris be allowed to help each other," Malik, said in Islamabad on his way to Muzaffarabad with a consignment of aid.
India and Pakistan embarked on a peace process to resolve all issues at the start of 2004, including their core dispute over Kashmir, which both claim and is divided by the Line of Control (LOC), a ceasefire line which is a de facto frontier.
Progress has been slow.
Since the earthquake, both governments have been criticised for letting ingrained distrust get in the way of opening up new routes to get relief supplies to beleaguered communities cut off in the Neelum and Jhelum valleys near the Line of Control. Pakistan, while accepting other aid from India, refuses to let Indian troops join in the rescue work on Pakistani soil, even though its own soldiers struggle to clear the way into the valleys and areas too narrow for helicopters to fly into safely. Pakistan still needs more helicopters to drop supplies and bring out casualties, but it asked India for helicopters without crews, as it meant flying over a region at the center of two of three wars India and Pakistan have fought. New Delhi refused to accept the precondition. "We have accepted all assistance except military men coming across and one should not grudge that," Musharraf said. "Other than that we have accepted everything. They want to give us financial aid, they want to give us medicines, they want to give us relief goods," he said. "Already we have accepted," he added, thanking Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh again. In an address to the nation on Tuesday, Musharraf described what his army was doing to deliver relief, and repeated his call for the international community to send tents and blankets. With winter looming in the Himalayan foothills, there are fears for the safety of tens of thousands of people stranded in the uplands without adequate food and shelter. Injured people are dying for lack of medical care, doctors say. Major-General Farooq Ahmed Khan, federal relief commissioner and Musharraf's point man in the crisis, said that aside from the need for winter-proof tents, Pakistan desperately needed at least 100,000 anti-tetanus shots.Thousands of survivors were still living in the open in cold night temperatures, "some with open or gangrenous injuries and with little access to clean water," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.
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