Rescuers, many of them desperate relatives scrabbling with their bare hands, battled on in the hope that they could save thousands of people trapped in rubble after Saturday's earthquake.

"We are still looking for bodies in the debris," said A.M. Khandy, deputy commissioner in the Indian Kashmir district of Karnah. "It is a calamity that is overwhelming our resources."

But time is running out, with few of those trapped under the rubble expected to still be alive.

Aerial pictures of stricken areas showed whole villages and towns flattened, as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf asked for more helicopters that could reach communities cut off in the region's rugged mountains.

The stench of decomposing bodies rose from beneath the collapsed homes in towns reached by journalists and relief teams, where a lack of drinking water and broken sewage systems posed a risk of contagious disease outbreaks.

Desperate people grabbed whatever they could from partially damaged shops, but there were also cases of outright looting by marauding youths. During the night, troops fired in the air to scare off a gang that had repeatedly raided a supply depot in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir's devastated capital.

Getting relief into major population centers like Muzaffarabad has been slow, although the government said road routes into the city had been reopened on Monday.
 
But a UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said roads beyond remained blocked by landslides.

He said Pakistan had been promised about 20 helicopters by donor nations, but needed about 50 more to airlift food, medicine and relief.

International donors have announced hundreds of millions of dollars of aid and have rushed in doctors, helicopters, food, tents and sniffer dogs.

Musharraf said tents, blankets and medical supplies are the priority items for the Himalayan region, which faces the onset of winter by the end of this month.

Late on Monday, a British rescue team pulled out an Iraqi child and his mother more than two days after they were trapped in the rubble of two collapsed apartment blocks, where at least 30 bodies have been found so far.

Those still missing included two other members of the Iraqi family, a Swedish woman and her three children, at least one Italian man, a Spanish man, a Japanese man and another foreigner.

Outside the capital, thousands have been sleeping in the open in cars or in tents shivering in the night's autumn cold and rain, but safer from aftershocks than they would be indoors.

Bilateral relations warm up

India and Pakistan set aside their often-bitter rivalry when Pakistan said it would accept India's offer of aid for Pakistani victims of the massive earthquake.

The two sides separately said on Monday that India would send the aid for victims of last weekend's 7.6-magnitude quake, and officials in New Delhi said it would be a planeload of about 25 tons of food, tents, medicine and other supplies for possible delivery by yesterday.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "has directed that a consignment of these items should be put together on a very urgent basis and delivered to Pakistan at the earliest," Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told reporters in New Delhi.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri said there was no problem accepting aid from its rival.

"When it is a question of tragedy of this magnitude it's not a question of one-upmanship," Kasuri said in an interview with India's New Delhi Television, broadcast live.

"That is why the president of Pakistan has gone on record as having said that we aren't going to stand on ceremony."

In Islamabad, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said Pakistan hoped the aid would come soon.

"Our High Commissioner in India has informed Indian authorities what we need for the victims of earthquake," she said.

Besides its humanitarian value, the Indian aid will carry immense political implications for the two hostile neighbors who have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir. However, the two sides have taken several steps since last year to improve relations.

Soon after Saturday's earthquake, the Indian prime minister had called Pakistani President Musharraf and offered humanitarian help.

Musharraf also made a similar offer for the victims of the quake in India-controlled Kashmir where more than 800 people died. In comparison, at least 20,000 people died in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Saran said Singh on Monday called the Pakistan's ambassador in New Delhi, Aziz Ahmed Khan, and "reiterated his offer to send relief aid to us for earthquake victims."

Khan later contacted the Pakistan Government, which after highest-level consultations accepted the Indian offer, Aslam said.

Pakistan had sent two planeloads of relief material to India to help victims of a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit the western state of Gujarat in January 2001.

(China Daily October 12, 2005)