3m earthquake survivors at risk as time ticks by

Aid officials have warned that the world is not doing enough to assist Pakistan. They said with a harsh Himalayan winter due to set in by late November, time was crucial if countless survivors, many still stranded in remote valleys and mountain villages over two weeks after the quake, were to be helped.

"It is very high risk that this population is in," UN coordinator Rashid Khalikov said yesterday, estimating rescuers had only five or six weeks to get people under shelter.

"Whether we are able to do it in six weeks or not, we will know only six weeks after today, but we will do our best," he said, as the confirmed death toll in northern Pakistan passed 53,000, with more than 75,000 seriously injured.

Those figures are expected to rise substantially, with untold numbers lying buried in the rubble of an estimated 2,000 villages yet to be reached and aid officials fearing a second wave of deaths among the untended injured.

Helicopters needed to reach otherwise inaccessible mountain villages cut off by landslides have been arriving - three British Chinook heavy transporters the latest - and more are due.

"Today we provided two more heavy-lift helicopters that can come over from Afghanistan," Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, said after flying over the disaster area. "We've got about 13 more that are over there that are coming forward. We will eventually get about 25 more over here. We are bringing in as much as we can.

"The NATO forces are coming," he said of the decision by the US-dominated military alliance to send an engineering battalion to help clear roads swept away or blocked by landslides triggered by the 8 October quake.

Abizaid took several injured survivors, including a paralysed girl, to Islamabad on his helicopter after visiting the disaster zone.

While Pakistan's main ally promised more help, a bespectacled Zawahri, wearing a white turban and seated beside an assault rifle, denounced Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in a tape aired on Al Jazeera television.

But he urged help for quake survivors. "I call on all Muslims and Islamic charity organisations in particular to go to Pakistan and give a helping hand to the victims there," said the Egyptian right-hand man of Osama bin Laden.

Washington has accused a number of Islamic charities of funnelling funds to Muslim militants.

With so many villages still cut off, the helicopter aid fleet is crucial, but it cannot deliver enough or reach everywhere, and pilots report villagers waving flags to signal they needed help.