By Carlotta Gall and David Rohde
    The New York Times

    Tuesday 11 October 2005

    Islamabad, Pakistan - Four full days after an earthquake devastated northern Pakistan, pelting hail and rain, as well as a shortage of helicopters, prevented rescuers from reaching thousands of survivors still trapped in isolated Himalayan villages, Pakistani officials said today.

    Rescuers have not yet reached "hundreds of villages," the spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, told reporters today. Eight American military helicopters joined relief efforts today, but bad weather grounded flights this afternoon.

    A total of 34 Pakistani military and civilian helicopters are involved in the rescue effort, according to Pakistani military officials. They said that represents virtually every helicopter in the impoverished nation of 150 million people, and many more helicopters are needed.

    "Yes, certainly, to reach out," said General Sultan. "There are many areas we haven't been able to reach."

    Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz today put the death toll from the earthquake at 23,000. Of the 51,000 people injured, only 3,110 have been evacuated from the area by helicopter, according to Pakistani officials.

    The vast majority of casualties are in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. United Nations officials said that an unknown number of Afghans who inhabited refugee camps in the area are among the dead.

    Across the disputed Line of Control, on the Indian-controlled side, the death toll rose sharply today, to an estimated 1,300. On a swing through the worst-hit areas of Indian-controlled Kashmir, Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, called it "a national calamity" and pledged $116 million to rebuild the area. Part of that money will go toward relief for Pakistan, which Islamabad accepted on Monday.

    As reports of desperate survivors looting and fighting over aid emerged from some devastated towns in Kashmir, the United Nations issued an urgent worldwide appeal for $272 million in earthquake aid. On the streets of Islamabad, organizations pitched impromptu tents to collect donations for victims. North of the capital, dozens of minivans driven by volunteers and packed with supplies snarled roads leading to hard-hit areas.

    In one hamlet on the Pakistani side of Kashmir, 100 miles northeast of Islamabad, Asghar Hussain Shah, a 49-year-old schoolteacher, shivered in a thin cardigan beside his broken house. He, his wife and children had huddled under a sodden tarpaulin to escape the rain that fell over this village, Mohri Furman Shah.

    "We cannot sleep in the house," he said. "All the men and women are frightened."

    Mr. Shah said his extended family - four brothers and a sister, and three small children - had camped out for three nights and were now trying to keep dry under makeshift shelters beneath the trees.

    "We need tents, plastic sheeting, beds and blankets," he said. "We are hoping the government will come to the rescue."

    The hamlet escaped with just 6 dead after all 300 children at the local school escaped before the school collapsed, leaving some 20 injured. But no government official or soldier has yet stopped to offer help, even though the hamlet sits on a main road.

    "We have seen no government person and no army," Mr. Shah said. "We are expecting something, but have had nothing so far."

    While little aid reached small villages, search and rescue teams from Turkey, Britain, Germany, France and other countries continued to search for survivors in the larger, hard-hit towns of Muzaffarabad and Balakot, according to media reports. After rescuing five children from a collapsed school in Balakot, a French rescue team wrapped up its operations there today, Agence France-Presse reported.

    In Islamabad this afternoon, a team searching a collapsed high-rise apartment building pulled a 75-year-old mother and her 55-year-old daughter alive from the rubble. Late Monday night, an Iraqi woman and her young child were found alive in the same building. Searchers continued their efforts at the building tonight.

    Earlier in the day. at the Pakistani military airfield in Islamabad, rescue teams from Jordan, Malaysia and Russia experienced frustration. After rushing to Pakistan to save lives, they found themselves stuck when bad weather grounded helicopters flights to remote towns.

    Before heavy rains set in, nearly 20 of the most seriously wounded arrived at the airfield by helicopter from villages in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. A 5-year-old boy named Owais, his left leg swollen and bandaged, lay on the ground, sipping a box of mango juice and waiting to be taken to an area hospital. He had been filling a water bottle outside his school when the quake jolted his village. His sister, age 10, was in class. She did not make it out.