Rain hampers quake relief one week on

MUZAFFARABAD, Sunday (Reuters) - Heavy rain in northern Pakistan on Saturday compounded the misery of survivors of last week's earthquake, disrupted aid flights and threatened more landslides on roads the army has been struggling to clear.

A week after the 7.6 magnitude quake killed nearly 40,000 people in northern Pakistan and India, relief officials were still trying to assess the scale of the disaster while trying to bring in help before winter sets in.

"Desperation," the operations manager of the U.N. relief effort, Robert Holden, said of the effect of the rain on victims, most of whom were in Pakistani Kashmir.

"Many people are out without shelter. It was miserable to start with but with this things are only going to get worse," he told Reuters.

"Our helicopter operations are grounded. We're not moving casualties, not moving relief supplies by air. Obviously we've still got land transportation corridors running but there is a danger of further landslides."

Hundreds of villages are still inaccessible by road, cut off after the quake triggered landslides that either swept away mountain roads or blocked them.

One section of road the army had managed to clear was blocked by a fresh landslide on Friday, Holden said.

"We've also got the danger of further collapse of buildings; a very, very difficult situation made even worse by the rain."

Altaf Musani, a senior World Health Organisation disaster official, said efforts to provide medical aid were being impeded by rain. It also made it more likely that disease could spread due to poor sanitation.

"The sanitation situation is quite serious, even in existing health facilities, so we need to set up a system, dig latrines, encourage hygiene," Musani said.

"We need supplies, we need to coordinate. Helicopters are key. We need to get people out to the periphery," he said. Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, was devastated.

Military officials estimate up to 70 percent of its buildings have either collapsed or have become uninhabitable. The civil administration has completely disintegrated, with personnel dead, injured or preoccupied with burying their own dead and looking after their families.

Government offices have been destroyed and the city has no power or water. Virtually everyone is living out in the open, in parks, gardens and on sports fields.

Outlying settlements are also in ruins, but no one knows for sure how many people need help.

"One of the things that we are working closely with the Pakistani government on is trying to really home in now on just how big is this. To be perfectly honest we don't know yet," Holden said.

"For planning purposes we're looking at perhaps several hundred, potentially, villages and small settlements that can't be reached by road, that need to be reached and need to get supplies."

The United Nations has estimated that more than a million people were made homeless by the disaster.