Rescues Bring Hope Amid Misery

A woman and a child who were trapped for 62 hours in the rubble of a quake-hit apartment building in Pakistan's capital Islamabad were pulled to safety on Monday, a witness said.

The survivors were brought out to the cheers of rescuers who have been working around the clock since the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck on Saturday morning, said Asim Shafik, a witness who lives in the area and has assisted in rescue efforts.

He said teams were working to free another child, and that voices had been heard in the rubble, raising hopes that more people could be rescued.

At least two dozen people died when the building, part of the upscale Margalla Towers complex in Islamabad, collapsed during the quake.

In a turnaround Monday, India's foreign ministry said it would send aid to Pakistan, and Pakistan said it would accept that aid. The two countries have a long-standing feud over the Kashmir province.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam earlier had told a news conference in the capital, Islamabad, that "there is no population" right on the frontier that divides the two neighbors, "so ... there is no possibility of joint operations."

"In international tragedies, aid from adversaries is often accepted in principal, but the logistics and perception of allowing an opponents' assistance across a border can block the actual delivery," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk, "but here, as we saw in Katrina, most aid in desperate times will be accepted because it is the victims that matter most."

Falk said the aid offer was particularly sensitive since it involved Kashmir, the region divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both since the 1947 partition.

Meanwhile, shopkeepers clashed with looters Monday in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, and hungry families huddled under tents while waiting for relief supplies after Pakistan's worst earthquake razed entire villages and buried roads in rubble. Death toll estimates ranged from 20,000 to 30,000.

Eight U.S. military helicopters from Afghanistan arrived in Islamabad with provisions, and Washington pledged up to $50 million in relief and reconstruction aid, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said.

"Pakistan is one of our closest allies in the war on terror and we want to help them in this time of crisis," said Sgt. Marina Evans, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul. "The terrorists make us out as the infidels, but this is not true, and we hope this mission will show that."

The United Nations said more than 2.5 million people were left homeless by Saturday's 7.6-magnitude quake, and doctors warned of an outbreak of disease unless more relief arrives soon.

Landslides blocked roads to many of the worst-hit areas. Everywhere along the earthquake's trail of destruction now, time has become the crucial factor for survival of people still trapped, reports CBS News correspondent Richard Roth. But the landscape does not help their odds.

Pakistan's army was flying food, water and medicine into the disaster zone. International relief efforts cranked into action, and an American plane full of relief supplies landed at an air base near Pakistan's capital on Monday.

Most of the dead were in Pakistan's mountainous north. India reported at least 865 deaths, but Home Secretary V.K. Duggal said it was not expected to rise much higher; Afghanistan reported four.

In the shattered streets of Muzaffarabad, where at least 11,000 people died, an Associated Press reporter saw shopkeepers scuffle with people trying to break into businesses. They beat each other with sticks and threw stones, and some people suffered head wounds. No police were nearby.

Residents of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan's portion of divided Kashmir, said looters also targeted deserted homes. Survivors lacked food and water, and there was little sign of any official coordination of relief in the devastated city of 600,000.

"Perhaps the disaster, the magnitude of the disaster is too big. It is something that Pakistan was clearly not prepared for," reporter Fahd Husain in Islamabad told CBS Radio News. "The damage and destruction has been so extensive that even after almost 3 days, there are many places where no relief operations, no relief goods have even reached them."

An eight-member team of British rescuers using a dog, drills, chain saws and crowbars pulled a 20-year-old tailor from the rubble on Monday, 54 hours after a two-story building collapsed over him and dozens of others.

The man, Tariq, was wide-eyed and covered in dust when he emerged, and he begged for water.

"I haven't eaten in three days, but I'm not hungry," said Tariq, who suffered a leg injury and was carried away on a door serving as a stretcher. He had been trapped beneath concrete and wooden beams, and a dead body lay on either side of him.

About 2,000 people huddled around campfires through the cold night on a soccer field on the city's university campus, where most buildings had collapsed and hundreds were feared buried in classrooms and dormitories. Soldiers burrowed into the concrete with shovels and iron bars.

"I don't think anybody is alive in this pile of rubble," rescue worker Uzair Khan said. "But we have not lost hope."

On the soccer field, Mohammed Ullah Khan, 50, said a few biscuits handed out by relief workers was all he had to eat for three days. His wife, who suffered a fractured leg, was wrapped in a yellow quilt beside him.

Their three-story home had collapsed in the quake. His family of 10 survived because they were on the top floor, which crashed to the ground. "My children are now on a hillside, under the open sky, with nothing to eat," he said.

A doctor, Iqbal Khan, said there was a serious risk of diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia if drinking water and other relief supplies do not arrive quickly. "These people feel as if there is no one to take care of them," he said.

The city had no electricity, and people collected water from a mountain stream. Shops and the city's military hospital had collapsed.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the earthquake was the country's worst on record and appealed for urgent help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas.

Other international aid, including emergency rescue workers, began to flow in. Planes arrived from Turkey, Britain, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Kuwait, Russia, China and Germany also offered assistance.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said his country's death toll was 19,396 and was expected to rise. Senior officials in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir put the death toll much higher.