Aid agencies are prioritising help for earthquake survivors, focusing on high-altitude communities, but that is leaving others vulnerable as sickness spreads, a UN official said on Friday.
The October 8 quake killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan, most of them in Azad Kashmir. Hundreds of thousands of people are still homeless and, with many mountain roads blocked by landslides, aid has yet to reach many in remote areas.
"The big concern is now that because of the limitation of the resources we have, we are prioritising and trying to reach the population living in remote highlands," Rashid Khalikov, UN aid co-ordinator said in Muzaffarabad.
"But in the meantime, we do not have enough resources to take care of those who are in the lowlands. Their vulnerability also increases dramatically," he said.
With some roads still cut by landslides triggered by the quake, helicopters are a lifeline for some communities but a big worry is how long the funds will last to keep the fleet flying.
"It's becoming very, very difficult," Khalikov said.
"Helicopters we have now can fly up to November with the money we have. With the pledges we have for the logistics, they may be operational until the end of December.
"But these pledges have still to be converted into contributions," he said.
Several countries including the United States and Britain have sent military helicopters to help with the relief operation, which aid officials say with winter fast approaching is a race against time.
Rain fell across the disaster zone on Thursday night, raising fresh concern about sickness and sanitation, but helicopters were flying as normal on Friday.
While there have been no outbreaks of epidemics, health workers say acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea, dysentery and tetanus, are spreading, especially in cramped tent settlements that have sprung up across the region.
The World Health Organisation this week reported 200 cases of acute watery diarrhoea in just one of the tent settlements in Muzaffarabad.
"Sanitation is becoming a very, very big problem," Khalikov said.
PROTESTORS BATON CHARGED: Police used canes against people living in an informal tent camp, after they protested against plans to evict them, witnesses said.
While the authorities are trying to persuade people to move to properly administered camps, people living in Jalalabad Park, having already lost their homes in the quake, demonstrated against being forced to move again.
"We just wanted to convey that we have become used to this place, and we don't want to move from here," said student Raja Abid, one of the camp dwellers involved in the protest.
Abid and others said about 200 people took part in a protest march from a park in Muzaffarabad, where families have lived in squalid conditions since the October 8 quake.
"They baton charged us indiscriminately. They didn't discriminate between women, children and men," he said. Protesters said the march had been peaceful. But Attaullah Atta, Muzaffarabad's Additional Deputy Commissioner, said he ordered the police to act after stones were thrown, injuring two officers, and marchers blocked the way for ambulances passing down one of the city's main thoroughfares.
Several protesters were injured too, officials said. Almost 400 tents are pitched in Jalalabad Park - one of the few open spaces in the ruined city, now surrounded by destroyed provincial government buildings.
"The administration has given us two days to shift, but where should we go? We don't have anywhere," Sayed Ismail Shah, one of the camp dwellers, told Reuters.
Deputy Inspector General Tahir Mehmood Qureshi said the administration had tried for days to persuade the people to move to a camp in a neighbourhood less affected by the quake.
"Today, they protested. We tried to disperse them through persuasion, but they didn't. We were forced to baton charge them," Qureshi said.
Atta said the administration would press ahead with plans to shift people from the Jalalabad camp, and later others who have sought refuge on the old university grounds and camps in the city's industrial areas.
"Insha Allah, we will make them move from here," Atta said.