Quake survivors fight for relief materials  Oct. 11, 2005.

    BEIJING, Oct. 11 -- On the third day of a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that hit Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, hope was dwindling on Tuesday of finding more survivors.

    The official death toll remained at 21,000, although officials in Pakistan's part of Kashmir and North West Frontier Province, areas that bore the brunt of Saturday's quake, suggested it could be almost twice as high. 

    Another 2,000 may have died in neighbouring India, and the fate of about 10,000 people living in remote villages on the border with Pakistan was unknown, Indian officials said.

    "We are still looking for bodies in the debris," said A.M. Khandy, deputy commissioner in the Indian Kashmir district of Karnah. "It is a calamity that is overwhelming our resources."

    Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Pakistanis who survived the earthquake are struggling to survive exposure outdoors as nighttime temperatures plunge to near freezing in mountain valleys one to two miles above sea level.

    As the scale of the humanitarian crisis dawned on Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf's government sought more aid from the international community. Help from overseas, and promises of more to come, began streaming into Pakistan Monday. Enditem

(Agencies)