ISLAMABAD, 25 October 2005 — Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday assured full support to quake-hit Pakistan, sources said.
Karzai arrived here yesterday with more aid for survivors of the powerful earthquake which devastated northern Pakistan this month, officials said.
“President Karzai has arrived,” Pakistani Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.
His office in Kabul said he had brought five tons of medicine and a 30-strong medical team to Islamabad, as well as his foreign, defense and health ministers.
Karzai met President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and expressed his nation’s deep sympathies over the colossal loss of life caused by the Oct. 8 earthquake.
“We will do whatever possible to mitigate suffering of the tens and thousands of quake-affected people in northern Pakistan and Kashmir region,” Karzai told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Karzai was expected to discuss relief measures with the Pakistani leadership following the Oct. 8 quake that killed more than 53,000 people, injured about 75,000 and made more than three million homeless.
In addition to providing four MI-17 transport helicopters in the ongoing relief operations, Afghanistan extended assistance worth $500,000 and sent a medical team and 50-bed first aid medical camp as well as 20 tons of dried fruit. The medical team was made up of doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
At least eight US helicopters and five German aircraft based in Afghanistan to maintain security and help with reconstruction after the fall of the Taleban government in 2001 have also been diverted to Pakistan.
Afghanistan is grateful for Pakistan’s hosting thousands of refugees who fled an earlier Soviet invasion but their relations have been strained over Taliban and other militants believed to be sheltering in Pakistani territory. Pakistan has carried out several operations to root out the militants, who cross into Afghanistan to carry out attacks as part of an insurgency against Karzai government, but some officials in Afghanistan say it is not doing enough to round up the fighters. Reacting to the worst tragedy in Pakistan’s history, Karzai last week launched an appeal to the Afghan people to extend maximum help to the neighboring nation.
“The hearts of the Afghan people are full of grief and pain and sorrow for our brothers and sisters in Pakistan, for those who have suffered,” he said.
Meanwhile, efforts to reach stranded villagers in Pakistan’s northern mountains gathered pace yesterday after the country’s friends urged help for up to three million survivors rattled by fresh aftershocks.
One on Sunday evening, at magnitude 6.0, was among the strongest of nearly 900 recorded since the Oct. 8 quake, but there were no reports of new deaths.
Equally important, there were no reports of major landslides in the rugged hills where army engineers are working around the clock to reopen roads destroyed in the quake.
Only when the roads are rebuilt — and in some cases this could take weeks — can aid be delivered in sufficient quantities to an estimated 2,000 still unreached villages to allow hundreds of thousands of people to survive the rapidly approaching winter.
The fleet of aid helicopters, although growing, cannot reach them all, or deliver sufficient supplies to the worst-hit areas of Pakistani Kashmir and adjacent North West Frontier Province.
