More quake aid urged for Pak

Efforts to reach stranded villagers in Pakistan’s northern mountains gathered pace on Monday after the country’s friends and foes both urged help for up to 3 million survivors rattled by fresh aftershocks.

One on Sunday evening, at magnitude 6.0, was among the strongest of nearly 900 recorded since the October 8 quake, but there were no reports of new deaths. Equally important, there were no reports of major landslides in the rugged hills where army engineers are working around the clock to reopen roads.

Only when the roads are rebuilt—and in some cases this could take weeks—can aid be delivered in sufficient quantities to an estimated 2,000 still unreached villages to allow hundreds of thousands of people to survive the rapidly approaching winter. In Rajkot, a two-day trek from Muzaffarabad but just a 10-minute helicopter ride, Farid Ayub complained it took 13 days for any aid at all to reach his village.