Helping Hands For Pakistan

Governments and aid agencies around the globe deployed emergency rescue and medical teams, pledged money and sent aid and condolences to earthquake-ravaged Pakistan on Sunday as the country's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf appealed to the world for help.

The 7.6-magnitude quake on Saturday in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir killed more than 20,000 people, mostly in Pakistan-controlled territory in the volatile region. One Pakistani official said the death toll exceeds 30,000. India also reported several hundred deaths, and Afghanistan said one girl was killed.

Musharraf said Pakistan needed medicine, tents, cargo helicopters and financial assistance to help survivors, the news agency Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

"We do seek international assistance. We have enough manpower, but we need financial support," Musharraf said.

The European Union on Sunday committed $4.4 million in primary emergency relief.

"We have a duty to get help as quickly as possible to the people whose lives have been turned upside down," EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Louis Michel said. "Europe's solidarity with the countries and people who have been struck by this tragedy is concretely reflected in our prompt decision to release humanitarian funds."

The United States and the governments of Japan, Thailand, Germany, Britain, the Czech Republic, and Australia on Sunday pledged $2.46 million in aid. China has promised $6.2 million, according to Islamabad.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said it would provide $100,000 in emergency relief funds, and that the U.S. military had offered to help.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw pledged $176,150 and said the government planned to send 60 medics, emergency workers and foreign office staff.

Many countries quickly assembled aid and readied it for transport to the mountainous region, where landslides are reported to be making access extremely difficult.

Some teams had already reached Pakistan on Sunday, including the first contingent of a British emergency rescue team.

Also already on the scene is a United Nations team of top disaster coordination officials who set up three emergency centers to coordinate relief efforts.

"U.N. agencies responded quickly to the crisis in Pakistan and India, combining programs of humanitarian relief and medical care of the World Health Organization and relief agencies including the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the disaster coordination units," says CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk. "U.N. relief organizations have experience in dealing with a tragedy of this proportion and by Sunday had established centers in Islamabad and in Muzaffarabad to coordinate the aid pouring in."

A Spanish group, United Firefighters without Frontiers, said its rescue team had already arrived in Islamabad with two large field hospitals and two tons of emergency equipment.

"We have sent 21 specialists in search, rescue and emergency medical attention of victims, as well as seven rescue dogs," said Enrique Fernandez, director of operations.

A Chinese emergency response team of 50 arrived in Islamabad on Sunday, also with search dogs, as well as communication equipment, blankets, medical and relief supplies, Pakistan said. A second Chinese planeload of relief goods was due Monday.

A Japanese disaster team of 50 was dispatched to Islamabad, where a medical team deployed by the Japanese Red Cross Society is expected to arrive Monday.

Russia said it was sending a plane carrying emergency workers, trucks, equipment and two weeks' supplies on Sunday, and the Swedish Rescue Services Agency was sending tents and blankets. It also offered communications equipment.

The Czech government said it was ready to send rescue teams with sniffer dogs.

The Malaysian Red Crescent said it was sending a relief team to Pakistan as soon as it received clearance from Islamabad, and that the team would be joined by Red Cross and Crescent workers from other Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. A Malaysian government emergency response team was expected, too.

Pope Benedict XVI and Queen Elizabeth II joined senior officials of South Korea, China and Iraq on Sunday in sending condolences to the people of Pakistan.

Benedict told the crowd in St. Peter's Square that he prayed "that the international community will be swift and generous in its response to the disaster."