Food needed for a million people, agency says

“It’s getting close to 72 hours and for those who are not pulled out by tomorrow, the chances of survival are very much reduced.”

Medical experts say an unhurt man can last three days without water and a woman four days, although in such disasters there are often extraordinary survival stories.

Mr. Aziz said he was confident the situation would improve over the next days. “They [helicopters] will fan out to villages outside the main cities so that the people receive relief there, in addition to the ground troops who are fanning out also, to go village to village and help out where needed,” he said.

NATO ambassadors in Brussels agreed to provide a small fleet of Boeing 707s to help move humanitarian aid to Pakistan. A NATO spokeswoman said the first aircraft with 7.5 tonnes of relief supplies would leave for Pakistan today.

Survivors from remote towns and villages said the only aid they had seen had been on television.

“ There are dead bodies everywhere and those who are injured don’t have a drop of water,” said Nasar Ahmad, carrying his injured young niece on his back into Muzaffarabad, the devastated capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

“ The main problem is food,” said Mohammad Altaf, who walked from Budman village to seek help. “ We’ve buried 250 to 300 people and hundreds more are still missing, buried under rubble.”

Rescue teams, who have had success in finding survivors in collapsed buildings, worry rising flood waters will increase the death toll.

Pete Mills, of West Midlands fire service in central England, said the rains would cut survival times, flooding spaces where people may be trapped and initiating secondary collapses.

“If a building gets waterlogged, it increases the weight bearing down on an already weak structure,” he said.

“ There is also more chance of landslides as the mud binding the rocks together turns to slurry, making the hills extremely unstable.

“If the weather stays bad, it will change the impetus of the operation from search and rescue to providing relief supplies to those still living.”

A spokesman for relief agency Oxfam said: “ All over the region bad weather conditions have caused road blocks and physical access to affected areas remains a major problem.

“ There could be mass movements of people if the weather continues to worsen.”

The road into Muzaffarabad was still open, but relief convoys were mobbed by hungry crowds.

Oxfam worker Shaista Aziz said: “By distributing aid to the people in their villages we aim to avoid a movement of people into camps where disease could spread.”

In the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, rescuers from a British emergency team, Rapid-UK, pulled a grandmother and her daughter alive from the wreckage of an apartment block yesterday.

It took 16 hours to get Maha Bibi, 75, and Khalida Begum, 55, out of the small space where they were crouched.

“I’m so sorry to put you through all this trouble,” Khalida Begum said.

Maha Bibi’s son, Mahmood Tariq Khan, said: “For 72 hours we prepared for a funeral. Everybody came to offer their condolences, then the news came that they are alive. They are both alive.”

At least 40 people are thought still to be missing in the same apartment block, including European, Arab and Japanese nationals.

“I think it will take a long time because we have to work very hard and very carefully and try to reach those trapped through listening to their voices,” said Captain Jan Bohman, a spokesman for Swedish soldiers taking part in the rescue effort.

The World Food Program said food was needed for at least one million people, but a first shipment sufficient to feed 240,000 for five days might not arrive until today. The problem will then be to get it to remote mountain districts.

“This food is needed urgently,” said WFP spokesman Amjad Jamal. “People are trying to recover from a major disaster; they are in shock and their bodily resistance will go down if they do not have enough food.”