Innocence Lost In Quake Disaster

About Half Of Pakistan's Victims Believed To Be Under The Age Of 15

(CBS/AP) 
Among other large industrialized countries, Canada has pledged $17 million and Germany $5.2 million. Germany also said it was sending two helicopters and about 50 troops — most of them medical experts — into Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan.

The U.S. aid is already making a difference: many of the supplies were loaded aboard eight U.S. Chinook helicopters to be brought into the disaster zone. One American soldier in Islamabad told CBS News correspondent Robert Berger he had come from hurricane relief duty in New Orleans.

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CBS News correspondent Robert Berger flew aboard a U.S. helicopter relief flight.

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And the United States has promised to bring in more helicopters. Also flying supplies into the region were helicopters from Germany and Afghanistan. Some 50,000 Pakistani troops joined the relief effort.

The Pentagon expects to send 25 to 30 more U.S. military helicopters to Pakistan from Afghanistan, Bahrain and other countries in the region.

The big American choppers, which can carry as many as 65 people, more than doubled the efficiency of the evacuation operation. Roads to the earthquake zone were choked by the very manpower and supplies meant to provide relief, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth.

"It just seems like there is no end to the casualties they have up there for us," said U.S. Chief Warrant Officer Mark Jones. "Each aircraft that goes up there is bringing back 30 to 40 casualties and there's always more when we leave. We always have to turn people back."

Jan Vandemoortele, U.N. Resident Coordinator for Pakistan, said key roads into the quake zone that were blocked earlier have been opened up. U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said that with the resumption of flights, helicopters had been able to unplug any backlog of aid.

About 30 countries — including the United States, France, Japan, Jordan, China, Russia, Iran, and Syria — have sent relief equipment, doctors, paramedics, tents, blankets, medicines, disaster relief teams. Many have also pledged financial assistance.

"Relief material is moving in," Vandemoortele said in Islamabad. "It is getting there. Roads are open now. They were blocked until very recently. We have several trucks that are all loaded and on the road now."

As efforts to help Pakistan progress, one U.N. official believes there is a need for a better worldwide relief fund.

That need has become especially pressing because a spike in natural disasters in recent years, including more hurricanes, has strained the international relief system, said Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, chief of staff to Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland.

"Quick money is lifesaving money," Strohmeyer said. "The system is stretched."

More than 1,400 people have died in India's part of Kashmir, and the offer and receipt of the aid by Pakistan reflects warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals, which embarked on a peace process early last year.

The Pakistani government's official death toll was about 23,000 people and 47,000 injured, but a senior army official who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the figure publicly said an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people had died.