Pakistani Quake Relief Helicopters Back in the Air
Date: 29-Nov-05
Country: PAKISTAN
Author: Abu Arqam Naqash
By late morning, the sun was shining over the Pakistani Himalayas where the Oct. 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people.
"The weather is clear. Army and international agency helicopters have resumed their operations," said Major Farooq Nasir, an army spokesman in the quake zone.
On Sunday, up to 8 inches (20 cm) of snow fell in some high-altitude areas and up to 1.2 inches (32 mm) of rain drenched some lower areas.
The Pakistani army, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross had to suspend aid flights while some trucks were held back as officials inspected the condition of quake-battered roads.
The aid agencies are racing to ensure that hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors get adequate shelter and enough food to see them through a bitter winter.
If not, disease could sweep through cold, poorly nourished survivors, causing a second wave of deaths, aid officials say.
The earthquake also killed about 1,300 people on the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
The nuclear-armed neighbours, which have gone to war twice over Kashmir since 1947, agreed to open five points along an old ceasefire line dividing the region last month to allow divided families to meet and aid to cross both ways.
But the points have only been opened intermittently for symbolic exchanges of relief goods and only a trickle of people have crossed the so-called Line of Control.
PERMANENT POINTS
Pakistan said on Monday it wanted to see the five points opened daily and turned into permanent crossings for people and trade.
"We will like it to be a long-term arrangement where Kashmiris can visit each other and where they can also have trade," Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a regular briefing.
"But naturally we to have to take into account the constraints of the other side as well," she said, referring to India. "We would hope that at some point the Indian authorities will be in a position to overcome their constraints."
Both sides have been nervous about throwing open their heavily militarised, de facto border in Muslim-majority Kashmir.
Pakistan says it does not want the Indian military to see its defences while India is worried Islamic militants, battling its rule in its part of Kashmir since 1989, might try to slip in from the Pakistani side posing as ordinary travellers.
Also on Monday, an earthquake measuring 4.7 shook the southwestern city of Quetta but there was no report of damage or injuries.
The epicentre of the tremor was about 160 km (100 miles) east of Quetta in the Suleman mountain range, a Meteorological Department official said.
An earthquake killed between 30,000 and 60,000 people in Quetta in 1935.