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(11/15/05 5:32am)
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- A tear rolled down the cheek of 5-year-old Syed Junaid Shah Monday as doctors from UNICEF and the Pakistani Health Ministry vaccinated him against tetanus and measles.\nThe boy is one of the 1.2 million children in Pakistan's quake zone that doctors hope to immunize in the next two to three weeks, but organizers say they have only received about half the $8 million needed for the program.\nWithout the money, "we will not be able to complete the whole activity, which means large numbers of vulnerable children will remain unprotected," UNICEF project manager Edward Hoekstra told The Associated Press.\nSyed also got drops to protect him from polio with an added dose of vitamin A help ward off respiratory illnesses that are easily spread during the coming harsh Himalayan winter.\n"This is important to keep him safe from diseases," said the boy's father, Syed Hussein Shah, seated beside his son on a green flowered mattress in the quake-shattered village of Sawan.\nMoving on to the nearby town of Chinari, the vaccination team set to work on a line of children seated on plastic stools while potato curry simmered in pots nearby. On a normal day, one team can immunize 200 children.\nMore than 86,000 people died in the Oct. 8 quake, and hundreds of thousands are still living in crowded tent camps.\nThe weather was clear and sunny Monday in the regional capital of Muzaffarabad, near the quake's epicenter. Yet snow already has begun falling on mountain villages, where NATO teams are working with the Pakistani army to build wood and metal shelters.\nRelief officials will meet in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, starting Friday to discuss long-term reconstruction, expected to cost about $5.2 billion. The United Nations says it needs $550 million in emergency aid, but donors have pledged only $131 million.\nU.N. officials in Pakistan said in late October that they might have to ground U.N. helicopter relief flights for lack of funding. However, a spokeswoman in Geneva said Monday the United Nations has enough money to keep its helicopters flying -- at least for now.\nElisabeth Byrs, the spokeswoman at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the United Nations only warned last week that it might have to reduce the hours its helicopters were flying if it did not receive sufficient funding. It costs the U.N. about $1,000 an hour to hire a cargo helicopter, she said.\nByrs said the U.N. has not had to cut back "as the funds are flowing in, albeit at a slow pace."\nPresident Gen. Pervez Musharraf, meanwhile, met with a delegation of American business leaders and the top State Department official for public diplomacy, Karen Hughes. He thanked them for U.S. assistance, particularly the dispatch of two dozen helicopters.\n"I don't think anyone else could have managed what the U.S. helicopter teams have managed," Musharraf said.\nMembers of the group, which aims to boost U.S. private and corporate giving for the quake, included Hank McKinnell, chairman and CEO of drug maker Pfizer Inc., Xerox Chairman Anne Mulcahy, and former United Parcel Service Inc. Chairman Jim Kelly.\nVisiting a U.S. Army MASH field hospital in Muzaffarabad, Hughes said U.S. support was "here to stay." An additional 180 American doctors will come to Pakistan this week to help out, she said.\nAlso Monday, India and Pakistan briefly opened a fourth point along the heavily militarized frontier in divided Kashmir to exchange aid materials. Both sides claim Kashmir in its entirety and the sides have fought two wars over the region since 1947.
(10/13/05 3:25am)
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- Rescue efforts gave way to aid relief, as hopes faded Wednesday of finding more survivors in Pakistan's devastated quake zone. Still, miracles emerged amid the misery: A Russian team rescued a 5-year-old girl trapped for nearly 100 hours under the rubble of her family home.\nTrucks and helicopters with aid from dozens of countries choked up roads to the crumbling towns of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, but the hungry and homeless in hard-hit areas remained isolated four days after the temblor.\n"No country is ready for such a disaster," said President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in a nationally televised address, acknowledging delays in his government response but saying relief operations were now fully under way.\nThe 7.6-magnitude quake Saturday demolished whole towns, mostly in Kashmir, divided by a cease-fire line between Indian and Pakistani territories. The death toll was believed to be more than 35,000, with tens of thousands injured.\nA strong aftershock shook the capital Islamabad early Thursday, causing buildings to move for a few seconds. It was not immediately clear what the aftershock's magnitude was or if it caused any damage.\nU.S., Pakistani, German and Afghan helicopters delivered tents, blankets and medical equipment and brought back dozens of badly injured people on each return flight. The choppers flew in clear skies after stormy weather forced the suspension of flights Tuesday.\n"The problem we are seeing right now is that there's so many injured Pakistanis, we just can't take back everyone. We are limited for space," U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said at a base near Islamabad.\nAt a landing zone in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, doctors selected only the most severely injured for evacuation.\nU.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Islamabad, where Pakistani leaders appealed for tents, water, blankets and clearing equipment.\n"We will be with you in your hour of need. We will be with you not just today but also tomorrow," Rice said at a news conference with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.\nAziz said small aircraft were able to land at the airport in Muzaffarabad, but C-130 transport planes were only able to airdrop equipment and supplies.\nThe United Nations estimated some 4 million people were affected, including 2 million who lost homes, and warned that measles, cholera and other diseases could break out. Some 50,000 Pakistani troops joined the relief effort.\nWashington has pledged $50 million in relief aid to Pakistan, a key ally in its fight against terror. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced an additional $17.5 million, on top of $3.5 million already promised.\nThe World Bank said it would double its initial commitment of aid to Pakistan to $40 million and said the long-term amount could run to hundreds of millions of dollars.\nRelief supplies poured in from about 30 countries -- including 25 tons of tents, medical supplies and food from longtime rival India. The Indian effort was not without a glitch, however, as a plane from New Delhi was forced to turn around because Pakistan said there was no room to land. The plane received new clearance and arrived in Islamabad before dawn.\nMost of the quake's victims were in Pakistan, with more than 1,400 people killed in Indian Kashmir. New Delhi's aid offer and Pakistan's acceptance reflect warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, who fought two of their three wars over Kashmir and embarked on a peace process last year.\nIn Muzaffarabad, desperate residents mobbed trucks arriving with food and water, grabbing whatever they could and pushing the weak aside.\nRescue workers fanned out from the town by helicopter to remote parts of Kashmir -- including eight teams from the British International Rescue Corps, which has found 16 survivors since arriving in the quake zone nearly three days ago.\n"As time goes on, hope will get less and less. But you always do get miracles," said Ray Gray, wearing a blue uniform and helmet as he prepared to board a chopper. "Even if we just find one person, the whole effort is worth it."\nPeople can survive under rubble for up to seven days, but dwindling air supply, injuries and dehydration take their toll on those clinging to life.\nFive-year-old Zarabe Shah lasted almost exactly four days until Russian rescuers with search dogs, listening devices and breath-detecting equipment pulled her out at 9 a.m. Wednesday and took her to a camp for homeless quake survivors.\n"I want to drink," she whispered, her cropped hair caked with dust. An elderly man fed her tiny sips of water from a blue plastic bottle cap.\nOn Tuesday, Zarabe's neighbors recovered the bodies of her father and two sisters. Her mother and two more sisters survived Saturday's quake but gave up Zarabe for dead and left Muzaffarabad for a less-damaged city.\nHeld tight by her uncle, she described how she fell from the stairs when the quake struck. The stairwell shielded her from debris, and she survived without serious injury.
(10/12/05 4:59am)
MUZAFFARAB, Pakistan -- Heavy rain and hail forced the cancellation of some relief flights to earthquake-stricken regions Tuesday and survivors scuffled over the badly needed food. Officials estimated that the death toll would surpass 35,000.\nEmergency workers in the northern town of Balakot pulled a teenage boy from the rubble, 78 hours after Saturday's quake.\n"He's alive!" rescuers shouted as people gave food and water to the boy and kissed him on the head.\nTwo survivors, a 55-year-old woman and her 75-year-old mother, also were pulled from the rubble of a 10-story apartment building in Islamabad, 80 hours after they were buried. They did not appear to have suffered serious injuries.\nA French search team on Monday rescued at least five children buried in a collapsed school in the northern town of Balakot, said Eric Supara, an official at the French Embassy in Islamabad.\nBob McKerrow, coordinator of relief efforts for the International Federation of the Red Cross, told CNN that "you can still keep some hope" for survivors trapped for five to seven days, although he cautioned that the cold and wet weather would also become a factor.\nIn Indian-controlled Kashmir, rescue workers Tuesday found the bodies of 60 road workers in a bus that was buried in a landslide during the quake, the army said. The bodies were cremated on funeral pyres beside the highway they were working on, officials said.\nEarlier in the day, U.S. military helicopters, diverted from neighboring Afghanistan, helped ferry wounded from the wrecked city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-ruled Kashmir. International rescue teams joined the search for finding survivors. Teams of Britons, Germans and Turks used high-tech cameras to scan under piles of concrete, steel and wood.\nThousands of civilian volunteers walked north toward quake-hit towns.\nThe worst-hit region was Kashmir, a divided Himalayan territory of about 10 million people claimed by both India and Pakistan. Islamic rebels opposed to Indian rule of its part of the largely Muslim region have fought a 15-year insurgency that has claimed more than 66,000 lives. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir.\nBad weather compounded the misery in the region, with heavy rain and hail forcing some helicopters loaded with food and medicine to cancel or delay their flights.\nThat official toll in Pakistan remained at around 20,000 people, but a senior army official close to the rescue operations said government officials were estimating that between 35,000 and 40,000 died. The official asked not to be identified because he wasn't authorized to disclose the estimate to journalists.\nIndian army spokesman J.S. Juneja said his country's death toll had risen to 1,460 with the discovery of the road workers buried in the landslide.\nThe U.S. Agency for International Development reported 33,180 dead in Pakistan, 865 dead in India and four dead in Afghanistan. citing its own, preliminary statistics.\nThe U.N. World Food Program said the first deliveries of food for 240,000 people will reach victims late Tuesday. Simon Pluess, a spokesman for the agency, said the WFP was prepared to feed 1 million people for a month.\nU.N. officials also warned of a possible measles epidemic and the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea, as the water and sanitation system is heavily damaged.\n"Measles could potentially become a serious problem," said Fadela Chaib, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. Measles is endemic in the region and just 60 percent of children, for whom the disease is often deadly, are protected. At least 90 percent coverage is needed to prevent an epidemic, the WHO said.\nAbout 10 trucks brought by Pakistani charities and volunteers rumbled into Muzaffarabad, where efforts by relief workers to distribute aid turned chaotic as residents scrambled for handouts of cooking oil, sugar, rice, blankets and tents.\nIt was the first major influx of aid since the monster 7.6-magnitude quake struck, destroying most homes and all government buildings in the city, and leaving its 600,000 people without power or water. Most have spent three cold nights without shelter.
(10/11/05 4:06am)
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- For two days, the young tailor lay trapped under concrete slabs and wood beams, dead bodies flanking him, in what used to be a two-story building. On Monday, British rescuers pulled the dusty, wide-eyed man into the sunlight.\n"I haven't eaten in three days, but I'm not hungry," said the 20-year-old man, who identified himself only as Tariq. He begged instead for water.\nThe eight Britons used a body-detecting dog, drills, chain saws and crowbars to extricate Tariq from the ruins 54 hours after Pakistan's worst-ever earthquake. He suffered a leg injury and was carted away on a door.\nTariq's rescue from the rubble was one of many reported in the mountainous swath touching Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Two girls were plucked from a collapsed school in Balakot, and a woman and child were pulled from an apartment building in Islamabad -- notes of hope amid a massive humanitarian crisis.\nInternational aid started pouring in Monday. Aircraft loaded with supplies came from the United States, Britain, Japan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Rival India, Russia, China and Germany also offered assistance.\nEight U.S. helicopters -- five Chinook transport choppers and three Black Hawks for heavy lifting -- were diverted from the war in neighboring Afghanistan. They carried supplies, tarpaulins and equipment, including high-tech cameras for finding buried survivors.\nThree military cargo planes with blankets, tents, meals and water also landed in Islamabad.\n"Pakistan is one of our closest allies in the war on terror and we want to help them in this time of crisis," military spokeswoman Sgt. Marina Evans said in Kabul, Afghanistan.\nWashington pledged up to $50 million in relief and reconstruction aid, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said.\n"We have under way the beginning of a very major relief effort," he said.\nDesperate Pakistanis huddled against the cold and some looted food stores because aid still had not reached remote areas of mountainous Kashmir, where Saturday's magnitude-7.6 earthquake flattened villages, cut off power and water and killed tens of thousands.
(10/10/05 4:25am)
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- Rescuers struggled to reach remote, mountainous areas Sunday after Pakistan's worst-ever earthquake wiped out entire villages, buried roads in rubble and knocked out electricity and water supplies. The death toll stood at 20,000 and was expected to rise.\nIn this devastated Himalayan city, wounded covered by shawls lay in the street, and villagers used sledgehammers to break through the rubble of flattened schools and homes seeking survivors.\nThe quake collapsed the city's Islamabad Public School. Soldiers with white cloth tied around their mouths and noses pulled a small girl's dust-covered body from the ruins, while the body of a boy remained pinned between heavy slabs of concrete.\nThe United Nations said more than 2.5 million people need shelter after the magnitude 7.6 earthquake along the Pakistan-India border. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it urgently needed 200,000 winterized tents.\nPresident Gen. Pervez Musharraf complained of a shortage of helicopters needed to ferry in relief workers and food and medical supplies, and appealed for international help.\nIn Washington, President Bush said eight U.S. military choppers were being moved to help in rescue efforts, and he promised financial assistance. India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan, also offered assistance, as did Israel, which has no relations with the Muslim nation.\n"We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan's history," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.\nThe quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of three nations, with the damage spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in northern Indian territory. In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed, killing at least 24 people.\nLate Sunday, helmeted rescuers found a survivor after hearing his cries for help. The thin man in a blue shirt, looking dazed, emerged on his own with little help and stood in front of a crowd of cheering onlookers. One rescuer patted his head, and the man waved and pumped his fist in the air.\nPakistan said the death toll ranged between 20,000 and 30,000. India reported more than 600 dead, and Afghanistan said four were killed.\n"We have enough manpower but we need financial support ... to cope with the tragedy," Musharraf said in Rawalpindi, according to the state-run news agency Associated Press of Pakistan.\nHe also appealed for medicine and tents.\nMusharraf told the British Broadcasting Corp. he knew of as many as 20,000 people killed, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told CNN about 43,000 people were injured.\nMusharraf said the only way to reach many far-flung areas was by helicopter because roads were impassable.\n"Our helicopter resources are limited," he told the BBC. "We need massive cargo helicopter support."\nMost of the devastation occurred in northern Pakistan. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 60 miles northeast of the capital, Islamabad, in the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir.\n"I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.\nTroops "have not started relief work in remote villages where people are still buried in the rubble, and in some areas nobody is present to organize funerals for the dead," he said.\nThe USGS said there were at least 25 aftershocks within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.\nAt least 250 pupils were feared trapped at the Islamabad Public School, and dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers, pulled at debris and carried away bodies. Several bright backpacks dotted the rubble. Nearby, a man cried over a child's body.\n"The communication infrastructure and systems are down and we can't get help to us, that should be the priority," principal Mushtaq Ahmed Kahn said.\nHundreds of people waited at bus stations, hoping to leave. The body of a man lay on a roadside, and a family pushed a body in a cart.\nHelicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. When confronted by urgent appeals from villagers, Musharraf responded, "For heaven's sake, bear with us."\nBush said he spoke with Musharraf and "told him that we want to help in any way we can."\n"Thousands of people have died, thousands are wounded and the United States of America wants to help," Bush said from the Oval Office.\nAziz said the American helicopters would be drawn from coalition military operations in neighboring Afghanistan.\nBut Maj. Andrew Elmes, spokesman for NATO's 11,000-strong force, said it was outside the mission's mandate to operate beyond Afghanistan.
(06/16/05 1:23am)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Osama bin Laden is alive and in good health, as is fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, a purported senior commander of the ousted Afghan religious militia said in a TV interview broadcast Wednesday.\nPakistan's Geo television broadcast the interview with a man it identified as Taliban military commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a former Afghan aviation minister who said he still receives instructions from Omar.\nAsked whether bin Laden is hiding in areas of Afghanistan that are under Taliban control, the man said he would not specify where the terrorist mastermind was hiding.\n"Thanks be to God, he is absolutely fine," the man said.\nThe man wore a black turban to shield his face, making it impossible to recognize him or verify his identity. He wore a gray jacket, and an AK-47 rifle was propped next to him as he spoke in front of a red-patterned, Afghan-style rug.\nGeo said the interview was recorded last week, but declined to say where.\nPakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao, the government's chief spokesman Sheikh Rashid Ahmed and officials at the Interior Ministry were not available for comment Wednesday. In Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry also had no immediate comment, and an official at the presidency could not be reached.\nA senior journalist at the independent station said on condition of anonymity that the interview was done near the Afghan town of Spinboldak, which is close to the Pakistani border.\nThe interview was conducted in broken Urdu, Pakistan's main language and the language in which Geo broadcasts most of its programs. Most senior Taliban speak Pashtu.\nThe man said the Taliban are still organized and senior Taliban leaders hold regular consultations.\n"Our discipline is strong. We have regular meetings. We make programs," the man said.\nHe said Omar does not attend the meetings but "decisions come from his side." He did not say where those meetings take place.\nIn speaking about Omar, the man referred to the Taliban chief by his self-proclaimed title of "ameerul momineen" -- "leader of the faithful."\n"Ameerul momineen is our chief and leader. No one is against him. Our ameerul momineen is alive. He is all right. There is no problem. He is not sick. He is my commander. He gives me instructions," the man said.\nAsked whether he has direct contact with Omar, the man said: "I will not say whether I meet with him or not. But he is giving instructions."\nA U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in late 2001. The offensive was launched after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
(02/18/04 4:31am)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- India and Pakistan agreed Tuesday to a timetable for peace talks both sides hope will end a bitter history of enmity and mistrust, striking the deal at a closed-door meeting of diplomats at a mountain retreat not far from their disputed border region.\nThe breakthrough signaled optimism that change was both realistic and possible, just two years after the neighbors nearly went to war.\n"Things are moving in a positive direction," India's Foreign Secretary Shashank, who uses one name, said Tuesday after arriving in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.\nThe agreement, announced in a Pakistan Foreign Ministry statement, will be finalized Wednesday during a meeting between Shashank and his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Khokhar. After years of sputtering efforts to end a conflict that has raged for more than half a century, diplomats are hopeful the moment has arrived for progress.\n"A broad understanding was reached on the modalities and the time frame," the Pakistani statement said.\nNeither side would reveal the specifics of the timetable. However, India and Pakistan are expected to set up eight groups to tackle the decades-old Kashmir dispute, build confidence and deal with issues such as nuclear arms, terrorism, drugs and trade. The agenda was first agreed to in 1997 but failed to make any headway.\nDiplomats close to the talks also said technical level discussions about a bus service in divided Kashmir and another bus and train route from Pakistan's Sindh province would take place next month.\nWith Indian elections due in April, no major breakthroughs are expected from the peace process anytime soon. However, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is expected to win the vote and continue the dialogue.\nIn recent months, India and Pakistan have moved to restore transportation links and diplomatic ties, and their soldiers halted cross-border firing in Kashmir, the source of two of the three wars between the South Asian rivals. A fourth war was averted in 2002 amid intense international mediation.\nOn Tuesday, the two delegations drove to Murree, a hilltop resort 30 miles northeast of Islamabad, and just a few miles from the Pakistani-controlled portion of Kashmir, where the agreement was reached over lunch.\nThe three-day summit, which ends Wednesday, comes after Vajpayee and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf decided last month to resume the dialogue. A July 2001 summit in Agra, India failed to make any progress.\nA cease-fire line divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, but both claim the territory in its entirety. More than 65,000 people have been killed in an insurgency that has raged in Indian-controlled portions of the territory since 1989.\nIn January, Vajpayee agreed to discuss Kashmir while Musharraf promised not to support terrorism in Pakistani territory directed against India. India accuses Pakistan of training and arming Islamic guerrillas fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan, a charge Pakistan denies.\nEarly this month, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said Pakistan's government has taken effective measures against Islamic militant groups based in Pakistan, leading to a decline in incursions into Indian-controlled Kashmir.\nThe talks on a Kashmir bus service and a possible train and bus route between Pakistan's southern Sindh province and India's northwestern Rajasthan state are expected to occur on March 8-9 and March 29-30, the diplomats said.