MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, Oct. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- The stench of death is the first thing that jars one who nears the capital of Azad Kashmir or Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, a bustling city till the morning of last Saturday when the 7.6 magnitude quake struck.

    Now five days on, the once scenic town surrounded by lofty mountains and nestled between the mighty Jhelum and Neelum rivers, is nothing more than heaps of rubble, with thousands still buried under tons of concrete and masonry.

    "Had we been here a day earlier, we could have saved many," said D. Lesmeister, a rescue worker from Germany. She is with a 13-member team with four sniffer dogs and technical equipment including thermal cameras, acoustic instruments, electric spreaders and hammers.

    "We still hope to find someone alive today," she said while waiting at the now collapsed building of the Muzaffarabad stadium for a helicopter to drop them off at some village high up in the mountains.

    The stadium is also serving as a makeshift field hospital for the hundreds of untreated injured, who have been carried here by relatives and family members from miles away from remote mountain tops and valleys.

    Initial estimates put the death toll in Pakistan over 23,000, with experts and relief workers saying the figure might double when rubble is removed. Over 2.5 million have been rendered homeless and are at the mercy of nature.

    Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, however, believed the relief work was picking pace. "More areas are opening up, much work has to be done in the Neelum Valley, while the Jhelum valley will open by tomorrow," he said Wednesday while inspecting the quake-hit areas in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, one of the worst-hit district in the 7.6 magnitude earthquake on Oct. 8.

    The city of Muzaffarabad and Balakot in North West Frontier province were severely hit with almost 70 percent structures demolished and another 20 percent badly damaged.

    At the Muzaffarabad stadium amidst the noise of helicopters, landing and taking off every few minutes, there were the screams of small children, who were being treated in the partitioned room."Oh Allah, Oh Allah, Oh Mama, Oh Maan, where are you..."

    The only consolation was that the heart wrenching screams meantthat they are finally getting the medical treatment. How many have survived is yet to be seen.

    A bearded man Abdul Hameed cried with pain as he was shifted to a stretcher, but when asked how he felt, he said "I am OK with Allah's grace."

    He has multiple fractures and was being shifted to Rawalpindi for treatment.

    The ever busy Madina Market is eerily quiet. Ijaz Naseemi, who has a shop there, was in Rawalpindi to get some goods when the quake struck. He returned immediately to the town after the disaster.

    "I had to walk 30 km from Kohala, as there was landslide everywhere and when I got back home it was all a heap of rubble," he said. "My brother Noman Naseemi was found buried there. He justturned 28."

    Local people speak of fear and anxiety as they are now living with the dead side by side. With no electricity and not enough food and water, many surviving families have moved out of town to relatives or other sheltering places. Enditem