Earthquake victims get aid; some flee area

RUSTAQ, Afghanistan (AP) - The first desperately needed aid trickled in yesterday for earthquake victims in Afghanistan's mountains - on trucks where roads were passable, on donkeys where snow and ice were too deep.

Survivors slowly walked out, with stories of whole families lost.

Frozen bodies were strewn across devastated towns and villages, many still unburied after this past Wednesday's 6.1-magnitude quake crumbled hillside homes of mud and brick or buried them under landslides.

Rescue workers say as many as 5,000 people died in the quake and a series of ruinous aftershocks.

One girl wept as she tried to recount how her entire family of seven was crushed under the rubble of their home in the northeastern village of Khojah Khirat.

AP PHOTO Afghan soldiers unload relief supplies that arrived from Pakistan yesterday at Khwajagur landing strip. The first plane arrived yesterday with relief goods for earthquake victims in the area.

"It's so painful, so painful," 7-year-old Bahrish whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. "I don't know if I have any relatives left."

She was among more than 100 people yesterday in the only clinic in the hard-hit town of Rustaq, reached by an Associated Press reporter on one of the first aid flights into the quake area.

The patients lay in darkness on the building's dirt floor - the clinic's power had gone out.

Hundreds of villagers carried heavy bundles and led goat herds down muddy roads in the region, seeking shelter or fleeing in fear of more tremors.

A Pakistani air force cargo jet and a Red Cross turbo-prop plane landed in nearby Hajaghar yesterday, bringing medical and sanitation supplies, blankets and tents to the thousands left homeless in temperatures below freezing.

Military trucks carrying the relief supplies lumbered slowly toward Rustaq, 25 miles away, where hundreds of quake refugees were seeking shelter.

"We don't know where the (refugees) will stay, and we are trying to organize a camp so they don't just spread around the town," said Juan Martinez of the Red Cross.

Qari Amir Allam, an official with the military alliance that controls the region, said yesterday that at least 4,000 people were killed in the quake and subsequent aftershocks. Previous estimates have ranged from 2,000 to 5,000.

Twenty villages were destroyed or damaged by the landslides, said Allam, who met the cargo flight.

"The dead bodies now are frozen," Allam said. "We must dig them up and bury them properly."

Allam said the latest aftershock rumbled through one or two villages Sunday, killing more than 200 people.

"We desperately need outside help," he said, as Pakistani cadets and Afghan forces unloaded more than 200 blankets and 200 tents from the cargo jet, which later returned to Islamabad.

Aid groups have been scrambling to reach the area, nestled at the junction of the Hindu Kush and Pamir mountains, since Friday, when reports of the first quake emerged.

A U.N. team was approaching Rustaq on donkeys and horses after a U.N. truck convoy proved unable to make its way through snow-covered mountain passes.

The team reached a village on the outskirts of the affected area, where it reported 320 people had died and 400 were injured, local officials told Khalili.

The U.N. trucks, carrying thousands of pounds of blankets, plastic sheeting and high protein biscuits, were expected to reach Rustaq today by another route.

Volunteers from neighboring areas were bringing whatever food they could spare and even a few pairs of shoes for homeless survivors, Khalili said.

Aid workers initially were skeptical about the high casualty figures Afghan officials gave, noting that the region is sparsely populated and that officials have exaggerated natural disasters in the past.

But physicians from Doctors Without Borders, the first foreign aid agency to reach the area, have reported that 1,800 people died in one village alone, the Red Cross said.

Afghan military helicopters were helping ferry medical and sanitation supplies because the tremors cracked local roads, Afghan officials said.

The Doctors Without Borders team reported a shortage of clean water and have expressed fears that disease and dehydration could cause more deaths.

A Red Cross convoy passed safely Sunday through front lines where the Taliban Islamic militia is battling the opposition alliance that controls 15 percent of northern Afghanistan, including Takhar.

The Taliban, which controls 85 percent of Afghanistan, including the capital, Kabul, announced a unilateral three-day cease-fire starting Saturday for relief efforts.

02-10-98