An entire generation of young people has been wiped out in Pakistan's worst earthquake in over a century, which struck its northern Kashmir region at the weekend claiming up to 40,000 lives. Up to four million people may be homeless.
"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst-affected areas. The maximum number affected was schoolchildren," Pakistan's military spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan said yesterday.
Rescuers are pulling out dead children in Muzaffarabad - capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the epicentre of Saturday's quake that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale - but there was no one to claim their bodies, which showed their parents were dead, he added.
The earthquake struck as schools were beginning classes and hundreds if not thousands of children are feared to have died when the buildings collapsed or were engulfed by landslides.
Maj Gen Sultan said there was not a house in Muzaffarabad that had not been damaged or a single family not to have suffered a loss.
With many towns and villages flattened across the hilly region, Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf appealed to the international community for heavy-lift helicopters, medical and other essentials, money and doctors.
The United Nations also said more helicopters were needed urgently to bring aid to the hardest-hit villages, most of which are located on precipitous and thickly forested slopes over 10,000 feet high in the foothills of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.
"Everything is gone, people are buried alive, nobody is helping us to find them," Muzaffarabad resident Akram Shah said.
Anger was mounting among those in places where significant outside help has yet to arrive, triggered by fears that time was running out to find survivors.
At several places people tried in vain to remove massive slabs of concrete with their bare hands to try and reach friends and relatives trapped underneath. "We survived the earthquake but now we realise we will die of hunger and cold," Mohammad Zaheer, a resident of the devastated town of Balakot north of the capital Islamabad said.
In Muzaffarabad, survivors ransacked military trucks that had just arrived in the city and carried food, tents, blankets and medicines away while aid workers looking on helplessly. Others broke into a petrol station to get fuel for cooking and warmth as they faced the dreaded prospect of spending yet another night in the freezing cold.
Late yesterday the Pakistani military said the authorities had succeeded in reopening the mountain roads leading to Muzaffarabad and Balakot as international rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialist equipment began arriving in the country and establishing field hospitals to cope with the injured, numbering tens of thousands.
But amid the gloom and devastation a young boy and girl were extricated alive from the rubble in Balakot 48 hours after two schools and an Islamic madrassa, or seminary, were toppled, with nearly 1,000 students thought to have been buried alive.
Offers of aid have also begun pouring in from around the world, with the US providing $50 million and also offering to deploy eight military helicopters from neighbouring Afghanistan and two C-130 aircraft loaded with supplies.
Afghanistan, which was also hit by the quake but suffered few fatalities, said it would send four military helicopters, medical teams and medicines. Ireland yesterday increased its aid to €3 million.