In Afghan Village, Hundreds of Quake Dead Remembered

Standing in a line at the edge of a sheared-off mountainside, a mullah and his congregation intoned a final prayer for the more than 1,200 people of Dashtak who died in last week’s earthquake.

Many of the dead, including 140 children who were attending school, were swept to their deaths in a powerful landslide that poured down this mountain in northern Afghanistan.

“If you want to go into this place and get your wood, do it now,” the mullah said. “After this, people cannot walk in this area. It is a big cemetery now.”

The mountain village of Dashtak was the hardest hit community in the May 30 quake. More than one-fifth of its residents were killed and 600 houses destroyed when the side of the mountain fell away. Now it is a sea of gray rock and dust that cakes the skin.

The scale of disaster at Dashtak, so remote that international aid workers did not find it until days after it was leveled, gives credence to estimates that as many as 5,000 people died in the 6.9 magnitude quake and its aftermath.

In Feyzabad, the capital of the northern Badakhshan province, U.N. and Pakistani officials Saturday argued over fuel supplies for Pakistan’s helicopters, further hampering a relief operation to quake victims that is already strapped and behind schedule.

The hours-long standoff at the Feyzabad airstrip illustrated the competition for scarce supplies that has plagued the relief operation from the start, prolonging the misery of the tens of thousands of survivors.

The United Nations and Red Cross have been able to muster only three small helicopters to shuttle aid to the estimated 100 damaged villages over 700 square miles. That paltry fleet and a severe shortage of aircraft fuel set the aid effort back several days.

Now there is enough fuel to keep the three helicopters in the air for the entire day. But on Saturday, three Pakistani helicopters delivered their goods and demanded a fill-up nearly equal to the entire U.N. stock, about 1,320 gallons.

In the end, the United Nations prevailed, persuading the Pakistanis to siphon fuel from an Afghan military plane parked at the airstrip, providing enough gas to return to Pakistan.

Meanwhile, U.N. and Red Cross helicopters resumed delivery of wheat, oil and plastic sheeting to the villages most in need. But the deliveries still fell short of the demand. As of Saturday, a full week after the earthquake, those helicopters had reached only 31 villages.

A U.N. statement, issued in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, said a convoy of 100 donkeys had made its way from Feyzabad to the devastated Shari Busurkh area, carrying 7 tons of rice and 100 tents.