Quake crisis brings rivals closer!

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Ms. Bholi Bhali

@Ms. Bholi Bhali

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Posted: 20 years ago

Last Updated: Wednesday, 12 October 2005,

Quake crisis brings rivals closer

Sakina Mir, right, is hugged by a relative in Srinagar before returning to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir

Kashmiri people are desperate to be allowed to cross the border

Indian troops have crossed the Line of Control dividing the disputed Kashmir region to help their Pakistani counterparts rebuild shattered bunkers. The move follows the massive earthquake on Saturday which killed at least 23,000 people in South Asia. It is the latest sign that the scale of the disaster is easing traditional rivalry between India and Pakistan. Both sides also eased travel curbs, allowing some Kashmiri families to return home via the border in Punjab.

Map of earthquake zone

Meanwhile the relief operation in the worst affected areas has been massively stepped up in a race to save survivors. Helicopter lifts Since their bunkers were destroyed in the earthquake, the Pakistani soldiers have been sleeping in the open in increasingly cold temperatures.

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Kashmir dispute

Such is the hostility between the two sides, who both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over the territory, that in normal times such crossing over by soldiers would have resulted in bloodshed, says the BBC's Sanjeev Srivastava in Srinagar. But the devastation caused by last week's earthquake is causing the traditional rivals to come closer, our correspondent says, so a group of Indian soldiers was invited by their counterparts to help them rebuild some of the bunkers.

In another gesture, both Delhi and Islamabad waived travel restrictions to allow some Kashmiri families to return home through the Wagah border in Punjab, since the bridge connecting the Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir has been destroyed. Our correspondent says although small, such gestures are not without significance, but there is a growing demand for easier access across the divided valley, allowing people to cross over to try to help their loved ones on the other side. Eating grass to survive In Balakot, close to the epicentre in Pakistan, US helicopters have been used for the first time to ferry in supplies and carry out the wounded. But in outlying areas relief has yet to arrive. Mukhtar Ali Khan, a resident of Alai, a town in Mansehra district in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, walked for 11 hours to seek help. He told the BBC's Urdu service that there were bodies strewn all over the town and the survivors were starving and yet no help had arrived.

HOW TO DONATE

Unicef

www.unicef.org.uk

Disasters Emergency Committee (UK)

www.dec.org.uk

World Food Programme

www.wfp.org

Kashmir International Relief Fund

www.kirf.org

Red Cross/ Red Crescent

www.ifrc.org

UN seeks $272m urgent aid

"There has been no government help and no help even from any non-governmental organisation... I have seen people eating grass. People are dying of starvation," he said. It is a similar situation in Kohistan, also in the North West Frontier province, where resident Musharraf Khan told the BBC that many people had died and now those who had survived were looting shops in a hunt for supplies. However, the Karakoram highway which links Pakistan with China through the northern areas, was re-opened on Wednesday following its closure five days ago due to landslides and mudslides. It is expected that the government and the non-governmental organisations will now be able to bring in necessary relief material. In Balakot relief is finally getting through, but such is the scale of the disaster that, five days after the earthquake struck, thousands of injured people, many of whom have had to walk for days to seek help, are still waiting for medical treatment, says the BBC's Andrew North. The doctors at the makeshift medical centre say the delay has meant that many of their wounds have become painfully infected. Our correspondent says that doctors at the clinic can only offer first aid and they can only hope helicopters will ferry them away in time.