Pakistan quake rescuers send mules to remote valleys

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan, Tuesday (Reuters) Troops struggled on Tuesday to send mules laden with relief supplies into remote valleys where tens of thousands of villagers have been cut off since an earthquake rocked northern Pakistan 10 days ago.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz put the official death toll at 41,000, with 67,000 injured, but feared a greater loss of life awaited rescuers beyond the landslides and collapsed bridges severing two valleys in Kashmir from the rest of Pakistan.

Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier province bore the brunt of the earthquake's deadly power on Oct. 8, and the lowest estimate of the number of people left homeless is 1 million.

In Muzaffarabad, the ruined Kashmiri capital, military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Rana Sajjad thanked God that a change in the weather on Monday had allowed helicopters to fly in supplies and take out casualties.

Where valleys became too narrow and steep-sided for helicopters to fly safely, troops leading the relief effort resorted to using pack animals to deliver food and blankets. "There are no roads as such existing on ground. Where it is difficult, they are establishing a mule track," Sajjad said.

A British doctor who returned from the Neelum valley recounted seeing up to 2,000 people in urgent need of treatment, many with injuries that were in danger of becoming septic. "There are going to be a lot more deaths," said Sean Keogh, a doctor with the British medical aid group Merlin.

Villagers spoke of their ordeal after trekking down the Jhelum valley to Chakothi, 61 km (38 miles) southeast of Muzafarrabad, where they could be rescued by helicopters as roads were still blocked. Holding his mother's head as she lay on a blanket after being airlifted to Islamabad, Hassan Din recounted how he and 20 other villagers had walked for two days. Two men died on the way from lack of food, cold and exhaustion.

With winter looming in the Himalayan foothills, tents cannot arrive fast enough. In Muzaffarabad, hardly a house was not damaged and many have been flattened, but power has been restored to at least parts of the city and mobile telephones were also working in some areas for the first time.

The deputy head of Muzaffarabad's civil administration, Liaqat Hussain, said there were plans for tent cities to house 20,000 people in and around the town.

He said up to 800,000 people urgently needed shelter in Kashmir alone, without even considering what was needed by the hard-hit Mansehra district of Frontier province.