ISLAMABAD, 24 October 2005 — Fresh tremors were felt in quake-hit northern Pakistan yesterday as aid trickled into the mountainous region and relief agencies struggled to reach cut-off survivors before winter.
An aftershock measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale was felt at 5:44 a.m. in Mansehra town, which has become a refuge for thousands of survivors from more badly devastated towns and villages in the Kashmiri mountains.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the latest tremor, one of more than 700 which have shaken the region since the 7.6-magnitude Oct. 8 quake killed more than 53,000 people and left more than three million homeless.
But at least five people were reportedly killed in neighboring Afghanistan when an earthquake struck eastern Paktika province, bordering Pakistan, around dawn, the Afghan Defense Ministry said.
Meanwhile, Pakistan and India moved to coordinate the aid effort more closely on both sides of the disputed Kashmiri frontier.
Islamabad made a formal proposal for two-way movement of Kashmiris across the de facto border, or Line of Control (LOC), while New Delhi announced plans to set up three relief centers on the highly militarized frontier. Pakistan and India were making plans yesterday to let earthquake victims cross the Kashmir border, bringing the rivals closer in the wake of a shared tragedy on both sides of the heavily militarized frontier.
Pakistan Saturday proposed creating five border crossing points for Kashmiris to freely carry relief goods to either side. India earlier offered to open aid camps for quake victims on its side of Kashmir.
“It appears to us that the proposals made by Pakistan can be reconciled with those that we ourselves had already made,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
Any agreement to let Kashmiris cross the frontier — long regarded as one of world’s most dangerous flashpoints — would be a clear sign of mounting trust between the longtime rivals who began a peace process nearly two years ago to bury five decades of hostility.
After Pakistan formally submitted its proposal, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said yesterday that “the ball is in India’s court. We hope India will make the right decision.”
In a statement released yesterday, Sarna said India was “ready to engage in discussions between our two Foreign Offices on these modalities and reach an early decision.”
He said quake victims would be allowed to cross the border for medical treatment, provisions and shelter in three camps that could start operating on the Indian side by tomorrow, pending Pakistan’s approval.
A UN relief coordinator in this quake-hit capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the calamity, said the world was only just “coming to grips” with the catastrophe and more choppers were urgently needed.
“Two weeks after the earthquake that devastated this region countless thousands (of people) need to be reached in high-altitude terrain,” Rashid Khalikov, the UN humanitarian aid area coordinator here, told reporters.
He said UN agencies, working alongside the Pakistani Army and independent non-governmental groups, had distributed 60,000 tents — nowhere near enough to protect the 800,000 people who are believed to be sleeping in the open. Another 190,000 tents were in the UN pipeline but more would be needed if the world body is to prevent what Secretary General Kofi Annan called a possible “second wave” of deaths as winter bites. “All the tents available in the world are being eyed for this relief operation,” Khalikov said.
International aid donors are scheduled to meet in Geneva Wednesday to discuss the world’s response to the catastrophe and how to prevent more deaths in the coming months. Senior UN officials have said one million people will need to be fed every day for the next six months. —
Additional input from AFP
