International relief efforts began to kick into gear late Monday as rescue teams arrived in earthquake-devastated towns of Pakistan’s mountainous north, where they witnessed scenes of utter devastation.
Barely a building still stood in the northwestern city of Balakot, which had a population of about 40,000 people, and victims whose bodies were recovered from the rubble were wrapped in white sheets and reburied in mass graves. In Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir, hungry survivors jostled for food distributed by local government workers. And in Peshawar, a medical emergency was declared to expedite treatment of injured survivors trickling in from flattened rural villages.
The death toll from Saturday’s 7.6 magnitude quake continued to rise, and Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said late Monday that 20,745 had been killed and 47,000 injured nationwide.
Rescue teams from Japan, China, France, Hungary and the United Arab Emirates on Monday arrived in Balakot and outlying areas. They saw bodies still pinned under buildings and large numbers of survivors wandering streets without shelter, food, drinking water or emergency medical equipment.
Airlifts of supplies were expected Tuesday morning, when eight U.S. military helicopters, which arrived in Islamabad on Monday from neighboring Afghanistan, were to ferry tents, medicine, blankets and equipment to hard-to-reach victims.
Anger appeared on the rise, however, as thousands of desperate survivors continued to await initial aid and heavy equipment to dig out the dead and dying.
In Muzaffarabad, looters reportedly clashed with shopkeepers. And in the Battagram district of the North West Frontier Province, residents said that a Japanese rescue team was preparing to launch body-recovery operations but that emergency supplies handed out by the Pakistani Army had proved painfully inadequate.
“The affected population in Battagram district requires about 40,000 tents and blankets, while the army troops left only 40,” resident Ihsanullah Dawar said by phone.
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President Pervez Musharraf appealed for public patience and calm.
“For heaven’s sake, bear with us,” he said. “There are certain limitations. We are trying our best.”
Foreign nations have thus far pledged $100 million in disaster relief aid to Pakistan, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters in Islamabad.
Half of that amount came in the form of an initial U.S. pledge for relief and reconstruction announced by the White House late Sunday.
Aziz said Balakot had been the hardest-hit town, and unknown numbers of people were dead in numerous villages that relief teams had not yet reached.
Rehman Khan, a receptionist at the Fairyland Hotel in Naran, about 60 miles north of Balakot, said he saw countless destroyed villages as he walked to town on Sunday.
A senior Pakistani government official said the army engineer corps had moved heavy machinery to open roads blocked by huge boulders and mud.
A 42-member British rescue team rescued a woman who was still alive Monday under huge chunks of concrete and twisted steel of a collapsed high-rise apartment in Islamabad. A 2-year-old boy was also rescued from under the debris by the team.
At least 81 injured survivors have been pulled from the rubble of the Margalla Towers complex since the quake struck Saturday.
One survivor, a man in his 20s, shouted “Allahu Akbar”–“God is great”–as he emerged late Sunday from beneath the ruins.
Twenty-seven people were found dead and Pakistani police believe 50 more bodies are entombed in the rubble of the apartment building.