Over 20,000 killed in Pakistan, India

Rescuers searched frantically in the rubble of flattened towns and villages yesterday for survivors of a devastating earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people in northern Pakistan and India.

In worst-hit Pakistan, more than 24 hours after Saturday morning's quake, hundreds of children were trapped in collapsed schools and 150 people, including foreigners, were buried in two flattened apartment blocks in the capital, Islamabad.

Rescue teams and ordinary citizens laboured with cranes and excavators or used their bare hands in desperate searches for survivors, some complaining bitterly about a lack of assistance from badly stretched central authorities.

President Pervez Musharraf said there were difficulties reaching remote areas. He said Pakistan needed blankets and tents, transport helicopters and medicines, while Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said it also needed financial help.

"This was a major earthquake, a major catastrophe, which has caused huge devastation," Mr Aziz said after flying over the area.

Pledges came from around the world within hours of the disaster and the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the effort was "rushing against the clock". The 7.6 magnitude quake, the strongest in Pakistan's memory, was centred in forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir, and violently jolted large parts of the north, as well as parts of neighbouring Afghanistan and India.

About 19,400 people were killed and more than 42,000 hurt in Pakistan, said Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao. Pakistan's side of the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir and its main city of Muzaffarabad were worst hit.

The communications minister for Pakistani Kashmir, Tariq Farooq, said the toll there alone could reach 30,000.

In Muzaffarabad, most houses, government buildings and shops had collapsed and frightened residents spent a miserable night in driving rain camped in fields, parks, graveyards and cars.

Another 689 people died in Indian Kashmir, where many mud and stone houses were buried under landslides.

Scores of activists from an Islamist charity linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned Pakistani militant organisation fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, were among those killed. The group, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's Parliament that took nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to the brink of war, said some of its mosques, schools and a hospital were flattened.