Kashmir quake toll nears 40,000

Pakistan raised the death toll figures from the Kashmir earthquake to 38,000 yesterday and said it could go higher after one of the most devastating earthquakes to hit South Asia in recorded history.

One week after the disaster the jump in the toll from around 25,000 people came with confirmation of more fatalities from remote mountain valleys and the town of Balakot.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he was unsure whether army rescuers had reached all affected areas and he expected more bodies could be found once routes into the Jhelum and Neelum valleys were cleared of landslides.

"I think it is going to rise," Pervez Musharraf told a news conference after his aides released the latest official toll. Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province bore the brunt of the earthquake one week ago.

Relief flights in and out of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, were severely disrupted yesterday by rain and only a few helicopters managed to take off from a makeshift landing pad in a sports field.

The aid effort has picked up steam in recent days after a difficult start due to a shortage of helicopters needed to reach remote mountain towns and roads blocked by landslides.

Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since winning independence from Britain in 1947, and on the Indian side of the ceasefire line dividing the disputed region 1,300 people were confirmed dead.

Some 3,000 Muslims gathered in Pakistan's largest mosque, Shah Faisal in Islamabad, for prayers exactly one week after the quake just before 9 a.m. on October 8.

The 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck just outside Muzaffarabad, a city of 70,000 people 100 km northeast of Islamabad, at the foothills of the Himalayas, where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.

The new death toll puts it on the same scale as the earthquake that almost destroyed the Pakistani city of Quetta in 1935.

Between 30,000 and 60,000 people are estimated to have died in the Quetta quake, according to the US Geological Survey. An earthquake in Bam, Iran, in 2003 killed 31,000 people. The main concern as relief operations moved from rescue to rehabilitation was to provide shelter.

The UN estimates that more than a million have been made homeless - local authorities put the figure at up to 2.5 million and winter is approaching rapidly.

UN chief emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said three times as many helicopters were needed to deliver relief.