After Quake, A Race Against Time

Rugged Terrain Complicates Rescue Effort In Pakistan

(CBS/AP)  "I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.

Troops "have not started relief work in remote villages where people are still buried in the rubble, and in some areas nobody is present to organize funerals for the dead," he said.

The USGS said there were at least 25 aftershocks within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor.

Dozens of villages have been cut off from rescuers by quake-induced landslides. Relatives desperate to find their loved ones dug through flattened homes and schools with bare hands.

In Muzaffarabad, a city of 600,000 that is the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, residents are facing food and gasoline shortages. There is no electricity, and people are collecting water from a mountain stream.

"People are relying on local fruit, and they have little food to eat. I went out to get bread, and could only get a couple of apples," carpet seller Gul Khan said.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said 11,000 people in Muzaffarabad were killed.

At least 250 pupils were feared trapped at the Islamabad Public School, and dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers, pulled at debris and carried away bodies. Several bright backpacks dotted the rubble. Nearby, a man cried over a child's body.

"The communication infrastructure and systems are down and we can't get help to us, that should be the priority," principal Mushtaq Ahmed Kahn said.

Hundreds of people waited at bus stations, hoping to leave. The body of a man lay on a roadside, and a family pushed a body in a cart.

The military hospital collapsed, and residents said there were bodies inside. Doctors set up a makeshift clinic in a park.

"The situation is very bad. Surgeries are being conducted on soccer fields. There are not enough doctors," Ozgur Bozoglu, a member of a Turkish search-and-rescue team, GEA, told Turkey's NTV television.

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. When confronted by urgent appeals from villagers, Musharraf responded, "For heaven's sake, bear with us."

President Bush said he spoke with Musharraf and "told him that we want to help in any way we can."

"Thousands of people have died, thousands are wounded, and the United States of America wants to help," President Bush said from the Oval Office.

Aziz said the American helicopters would be drawn from coalition military operations in neighboring Afghanistan.

But Maj. Andrew Elmes, spokesman for NATO's 11,000-strong force, said it was outside the mission's mandate to operate beyond Afghanistan.

The United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany offered assistance. An eight-member U.N. team of top disaster coordination officials arrived in Islamabad on Sunday.

CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk reports that U.N. agencies have responded quickly to the crisis in Pakistan and India, combining programs of humanitarian relief and medical care.

On the Indian side of the border, at least 54 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

The death toll in India exceeded 650 Sunday. Most of the deaths were in the Jammu-Kashmir border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and Srinagar.

Hundreds of angry villagers blocked area roads, protesting the slow pace of rescue efforts. Locals demanded that journalists and soldiers with aid go to their mountainside villages.

"Everything is destroyed — the ground shook and took everything down," Syad Hassan said.

Most people in Jammu-Kashmir spent the cold night in the open, lighting fires with wood from fallen houses to keep warm.