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The UN begged the world on Thursday not to abandon survivors of Pakistan's earthquake, warning of a second wave of deaths without a dramatic effort on a par with the Berlin airlift to reach stranded villagers.
"We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was the worst we could get. This is worse," Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief co-ordinator, told journalists.
Nearly two weeks after the earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in South Asia, Pakistan set up new helipads and Nato shipped tonnes of aid, but the United Nations estimated half a million people were still cut off.
He called on the international community to launch a "second Berlin airlift", referring to the air shuttle that overcame the Soviet blockade of the German city in the late 1940s.
"Tens of thousands of people's lives are at stake and they could die if we don't get to them in time," Egeland said.
"The world is not responding as it should," he added, warning of a "cutoff" facing aid deliveries in December as winter and "massive" snowfalls take hold in the region.
He was echoing a strongly worded appeal by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who called late on Wednesday for an "immediate and exceptional escalation of the global relief effort."
"That means a second, massive wave of death will happen if we do not step up our efforts now," Annan said at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
He said he would go in person next week to a UN-sponsored donors' conference in Geneva on the disaster and urged governments to attend at the highest level.
"I expect results," he said. "There are no excuses. If we are to show ourselves worthy of calling ourselves members of humankind, we must rise to this challenge."
Annan complained that donors had only made firm commitments of 12 percent of the UN flash appeal of 312 million dollars, while the Asian tsunami appeal last December had been more than 80 percent funded within 10 days of the disaster.
Amid UN predictions that 120,000 survivors have still not been reached and that 10,000 more children could die, Pakistani authorities who are still providing the backbone of the relief effort welcomed Annan's comments.
The UN has received 86 million dollars in aid pledges in response to its appeal for 272 million dollars in aid from the international community. That appeal has since been raised to 312 million dollars for six months.
Other bilateral offers of aid to Pakistan have been made by countries.
Currently 60 helicopters are operating in the region, with 20 more due to arrive, the UN said.
"We agree with the UN assessment that this is one of the most difficult missions ever due to rugged terrain," said Pakistan's disaster response chief, Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan.
He said more than 49,739 people have been confirmed dead and more than 74,000 were injured in Pakistan. The earthquake also killed 1,329 people in occupied Kashmir, according to Indian police.
Asked about a report that 79,000 people had died across South Asia in the disaster, Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told AFP that official figures as of Thursday morning were far lower than that.
The military said it was stepping up its drive to get to the most remote areas using helicopters, mules and foot soldiers and would open 24 new helipads for quake aid flights in the mountains.
The helipads will be set up outside Muzaffarabad, which is slowly returning to normal - in the devastated Jhelum and Neelum valleys that are only now seeing road links restored.
"Our village has been completely abandoned. It's full of injured but we haven't received any medical or food aid, nothing from the army," said Ghulam Hussein, 28, who had been walking for two days on a road in the Neelum Valley.
Nato, the North Atlantic alliance, also entered the relief operation, starting flights from its base in Incirlik, Turkey to Pakistan that will bring in some 900 tons of humanitarian aid from the UN refugee agency.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005

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