PAKISTAN: Rain and snow fell across Pakistan's earthquake zone for a second straight day yesterday, grounding relief flights and adding to the misery of millions of survivors camped out in tents and crude shelters.
Heavy snow fell across high ground and rain drenched valleys overnight, triggering some tent collapses and landslides, but the military, co-ordinating a huge relief effort with aid groups, said there had been no reports of major incidents.
"There has been no unpleasant news regarding any accidents," said Maj Farooq Nasir, a military spokesman in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
More than 73,000 people were killed by the October 8th earthquake in northern Pakistan and about 1,300 died in Indian Kashmir.
The Pakistan meteorological department said some parts of the quake zone, which extends from Kashmir into North West Frontier Province, had seen more than two feet (60 cm) of snow.
Met office official Mohammad Aslam said rain and widespread heavy snow were expected until Saturday.
More than two million people have been camping out since the quake in tents or flimsy shelters built in the rubble of their homes.
They said heavy snow had brought down tents in the remote, high-altitude Allai Valley of North West Frontier Province as well as in some parts of Pakistani Kashmir.
Maj Nasir said heavy rain across the fractured mountains had produced some landslides and rockfalls but some relief operations by road were continuing.
The bad weather had been expected since early December but held off, allowing more supplies of shelter, bedding, food and medical supplies to be flown and trucked up into the mountains.
Yesterday was only the third day that vital air operations had to be suspended since the quake and relief officials said there was no cause for immediate alarm.
"In terms of overall relief, it's not the end of the world," said the UN logistics chief in Muzaffarabad, Natasha Hryckow.
But the snow and rain have brought misery across the region.
"Everything is wet," said a tearful woman named Shakina, huddled with one of her three children next to a fire outside her sodden tent in a camp in Muzaffarabad.
"This is very difficult for me and my children. We can't survive in this tent."
The village of Kachili, about 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Muzaffarabad, received about a foot of snow. Residents said most tents had come down as their pegs had come loose in the wet ground.
They said it had started snowing again in the morning and power was cut off and roads blocked.
A resident said people had had to crowd into crude shelters made from the rubble of houses and iron sheets provided by the government. "Tents are of no use now," he said.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said the snow increased the dangers of avalanches, one of which killed 24 people last week after being triggered by one of the hundreds of aftershocks that have rocked northern Pakistan since October.