Pakistan quake-hit villages still cut off as grim Ramadan ends

ISLAMABAD, Friday (AFP) - Rescuers tried Thursday to reach dozens of Pakistani villages left without any aid since last month's quake as solemn survivors marked the last day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

International and Pakistani helicopters made renewed attempts to get to devastated areas that were cut off by the October 8 quake, which killed 73,000 people in one of the biggest disasters of the past century.

Aid workers and Pakistani military officials have blamed difficult terrain and adverse weather as well as logistical problems and a shortage of aircraft for failing to reach some of the estimated 2,000 quake-hit villages.

"The problem is of means of transportation," army Brigadier Zafar Ali told AFP in Muzaffarabad, the shattered capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

"That's why we are trying and appealing to the international community to come and help us with choppers."

Aid officials have warned that thousands more may die unless survivors in the remote mountain hamlets get more food and shelter before the Himalayan winter starts in a few weeks.

Pakistan's relief chief Major General Farooq said Wednesday that 41 villages were yet to be reached, at the same time as President Pervez Musharraf called for sustained international support.

The United Nations has appealed to rich nations to donate more cash, saying the world body has received less than a quarter of what it needs for immediate emergency aid.

In Muzaffarabad, streets wore a deserted look ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid-al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan. The festival is due to start in Pakistan on Friday.

"What is Eid?" Nasima Bibi, whose 18-year-old son Mustafa died in the quake, said as she cleared the young man's simple grave.

"I lost my house, I lost my eldest son who was going to be breadwinner because my husband is ill. What does this Eid mean for me?" she told AFP, breaking down in tears.

The day before Eid is normally one of the busiest of the year, with people descending from the nearby mountains to shop for food, sweets and clothes and to get their hair cut, while women decorate their hands with henna.

Instead many residents in the city, where tens of thousands died, said they would be too busy scrabbling for relief goods to celebrate the festival.

"We will not celebrate Eid simply because most of our brethren in the town have suffered," said elderly Ejaz Hussein, whose house is too badly damaged to live in. "There are too many losses, physical and financial. We can't celebrate with any kind of fanfare."

Many of the open-air venues where people would traditionally offer Eid prayers are now the sites of tent villages. The quake left more than three million homeless, and hundreds of thousands still have no shelter.

However, 1,000 students from the youth wing of Pakistan's main religious party Jamaat-e-Islami came to Muzaffarabad on Thursday to distribute gifts and toys to child survivors.