Pakistan says 2.5 million homeless as winter approaches

ISLAMABAD, Wednesday (AFP) - Around 2.5 million people left homeless by a mammoth quake which killed 23,000 in Pakistan need urgent help as winter approaches, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Tuesday.

Aziz appealed to foreign governments to send more money, tents, blankets and other aid to help survivors four days after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake.

"There is one estimate of 2.5 million people will need new housing," he told a news conference in the capital Islamabad. "Whole cities have been annihilated".

One of the major challenges was that winter was drawing in and survivors in the mountainous region would need immediate protection from the cold and also massive help to rebuild their lives.

"Soon many of the people who are homeless will face winter, so that is why we need to provide tents and take other measures to ensure that when severe winter comes they are protected," he said.

"Our priorities for foreign assistance are, first, financial, so then we can buy locally and send quickly," he said.

"Second would be tents; third would be blankets; fourth would be medicines and medical equipment; fifth would be engineering equipment to rebuild."

He added: "It's a mammoth exercise in logistics, it's a mammoth exercise in coordination, it's a mammoth exercise in every respect of human endurance."

Aziz said the latest death toll was approximately 23,000 and the number of injured about 51,000. "It is expected to rise as we go into the outlying areas," he added. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the toll in Indian Kashmir jumped to 1,300 Tuesday.