Kashmir quake - world's toughest relief operation

The aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Pakistan's northern mountains is turning into the toughest relief operation the world has ever known, international aid officials said yesterday.

"We have never had this kind of logistical nightmare ever. We thought the tsunami was bad, this is worse," said United Nations emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland. He castigated governments for being slow to give urgently needed money and called on Nato to set up a "Berlin Airlift" to save tens of thousands of people awaiting help in the rugged hills of Pakistani Kashmir and North West Frontier Province.

"The emergency in Kashmir is becoming worse by day as the extent of the emergency dawns on us. The world is not responding as we should be," Mr Egeland told a news conference in Geneva.

Although the confirmed death toll - 50,000 in Pakistan and 1,300 in Indian Kashmir - is only about a quarter of that in last year's December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami, it could double, he said.

"I presume there will be more... we know of dead and then there are people that are missing," Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told CNN. "Certainly it will be more than 50,000."