Free Republic

NEW DELHI: Five billion dollars. That is the amount of global aid Pakistan government aims to mobilise from the rest of the world after the earthquake toll touched 73,000. Pakistan foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri, who called Natwar Singh this evening to convey his condolences over the loss of life and property after Saturday’s Delhi blasts, also requested an Indian presence at the next donors’ conference in Pakistan. Interestingly this fund-raising activity comes when US relief helicopter came under rocket fire in Chakothi area in PoK on Tuesday. Pakistan said it was blasting dynamite on the roads, but the US army...

Assailants fired at a U.S. military helicopter Tuesday as it ferried supplies to earthquake victims in Pakistan's portion of divided Kashmir, the U.S. military said, but it vowed to continue aid flights. The attack with an apparent rocket-propelled grenade came as the CH-47 Chinook flew over Chakothi, a quake-ravaged town near the frontier separating the Pakistani and Indian portions of the Himalayan region, said Capt. Rob Newell, a spokesman for the U.S. military relief effort. "The aircraft was not hit and returned safely with its crew" to an air base near the capital, Islamabad, he told The Associated Press. The...

Quake aid shortfall baffles By Robert Birsel 2 hours, 21 minutes ago MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The United Nations reacted with bafflement and dismay on Thursday at the world's failure to come up with quick cash to help save hundreds of thousands of Pakistani quake survivors before winter sets in. ADVERTISEMENT Relief workers were only a few days away from grounding the vital helicopter fleet which is the only way to get help quickly to the remote mountain villages flattened by the October 8 quake, which killed more than 54,000 people, one U.N. official said. "When the money runs out,...

BAM, Iran - Iran's president thanked his country's biggest enemy, the United States, for sending help after this weekend's devastating earthquake, as survivors Tuesday mobbed relief trucks and bulldozers dug trench after trench to fill with the white-shrouded bodies of the dead. International relief workers said they were shifting their focus from searching for survivors in the flattened city of Bam to helping the injured and homes — and burying the corpses still being pulled from the rubble. Several hundred relief workers headed home, frustrated over finding so few survivors. The death toll from Friday's 6.6-magnitude quake that shook Bam...