UN warns Kashmir quake aid efforts on knife's edge

0 Comments | AFP, December, 2005

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Eight weeks after the South Asian earthquake, efforts to shelter thousands of Kashmiri survivors from the killer Himalayan winter are on a knife's edge, the United Nations said.

Many tents handed out to victims are not designed for winter, while complacency about the aid given so far was a bigger enemy than the weather and the rugged terrain, UN emergency coordinator Jan Vandemoortele said on Friday.

"The situation remains very difficult and indeed we are on a knife's edge," Vandemoortele told a news conference in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

The October 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people in Pakistan and 1,300 in India, but the focus now is on the 3.5 million underfed people facing winter without homes.

The three...