KASHMIR: Sorrow is turning to anger as survivors of Saturday's earthquake criticise the slow rescue effort, reports Declan Walsh in Muzaffarabad
Eyes glassy with grief, Muhammad Afar dropped on to one knee and peered into a small mountain of debris along Muzaffarabad's main commercial street. He gestured angrily towards a hole covered with swarming flies.
"In there," he said, his voice quavering with anguish. "For three days my brothers have been trapped in there. For three days the government does nothing. And now they are rotting." The brothers - Babar, Tanweer and Sanwaz - worked in the Ahmed medical store, a small but proud pharmacy on Bank Road. Founded in 1948, when the owner crossed over from Indian-controlled Kashmir, the business was crushed into a pile of dust and bones at about 9am last Saturday.
A sickly, rich smell wafted from the dark gap in the rubble. The four brothers had been together only hours before the quake, Mr Afar said, after a night spent eating, laughing and discussing family business. He saw them off at the bus stop at 7.15 in the morning. Shortly afterward the quake pancaked his house and flattened his elderly mother, who had been washing clothes on the veranda. Mr Afar was working in a field.
Yesterday morning he went looking for his brothers but found the wrecked medical store. He begged soldiers to help him tear back the concrete blocks but they were busy. So he started to hack away a passage on his own.
By late afternoon sweat dripped from his nose. Desperation turned to fury. As an army helicopter buzzed overhead, a torrent of angry words tumbled out. "This army," he said in broken English, stabbing a finger towards the sky. "The air is turning. The ground is moving. But no help for the poor man." Then, repeating the words like a mantra, he said over and again: "Three days. Three days." International search and rescue teams arrived by helicopter in Muzaffarabad yesterday, hoping to pluck more survivors from the city at the epicentre of the quake. Sniffer dogs from Britain helped locate one man who had been trapped for more than 50 hours.
But with every hour that passes the rescuers' chances of success dwindle further. Now attention is swinging to the challenge of the dead. Only a fraction of the city's 11,000 estimated victims have been buried. Their remains are becoming a serious health hazard.
As the sun rose higher yesterday the stench of corpses drifted across Muzaffarabad, causing residents to pull masks over their faces and doctors to fret about the threat of epidemics. Food stocks are running short, the water supplies have been cut, and most families are sleeping outside in chilly weather. Supplies of coffins are running out. In nearby Balakot, where hundreds of children died after three schools collapsed, preparations were being made for a mass grave.
Muzaffarabad's problems are just part of a massive aid challenge. International aid agencies estimate that 120,000 people need immediate shelter and up to 4 million could be left homeless.
At the main functioning hospital in Abbottabad, facilities were desperately stretched. Just the x-ray and emergency surgery rooms were open, leaving 3,000 patients spread across the hospital lawn. The outdoor wards were a picture of suffering and desperation. Many of the injured cried out from painful head traumas or crushed limbs. There was little medicine and few doctors were there.
Children appeared to account for a large amount of the casualties. Thousands had just started their morning classes when the quake struck. Relatives fanned them with newspapers or large leaves.
Shimshad Bibi, a woman with a bruised, badly swollen face, sat over her semi-conscious daughter, Naila. Her mother-in-law had already died, buried under the rubble of their home. "We have not mourned her yet, there is no time for that," she said.
By yesterday morning no aid relief had reached Abbottabad hospital even though it is less than three hours by road from the capital, Islamabad. Despairing medics approached this reporter to plead for help. "Please write about what is happening here," said Dr Javeria Qayyum. "We don't have enough medicine, the conditions are terrible and our patients are mostly unattended. And soon we may face the problem of epidemics - typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea." There was some hope. The chief neurosurgeon, Sajid Nazir Bhatti, said he had performed 25 major operations in two days.
The spirit of assistance was also present at the hospital gate. Several hundred men had mustered outside waiting for transport to Balakot. "We want to go and help in any way we can," said Sohail Ayub, a 29-year-old printer. "It's got nothing to do with religious duty - it's our obligation as human beings." Back in Muzaffarabad, Muhammad Afar continued his lonely search for Babar, Tanweer and Sanwaz. Pete Mills, a rescuer from the West Midlands police who was walking by, stopped briefly to look. "It's no good," he said, shaking his head. "They are not alive."