Up to 35 children die of pneumonia in Pakistan

Up to 35 children have died of pneumonia in three mountain villages in Pakistani Kashmir since last week after heavy snowfalls in which temperatures plummeted as low as minus 30 Celsius, a local official said on Tuesday.

Regional health director Hasan Khan Abacha said 28 children had died in the remote Gultari area on the military Line of Control dividing Kashmir, about 300 km (190 miles) northeast of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Fida Mohammad Nashad, who represents the Northern Areas regional council, put the number at 35 and appealed for help.

"I have written to the civilian and military authorities to ask them to do something," he said.

Abacha said deaths occurred in three villages - Matayal, Karbosh and Bunyal - after temperatures dropped to minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) in heavy snow that cut all road links and prevented helicopter flights.

He said medicines were available in the area's main town, Skardu, but these could only be carried by helicopter.

Skardu district health officer Iqbal Beg said there had been a rush of pneumonia patients at the government hospital there and he called on authorities to send specialist doctors for children as well as blankets to Gultari.

Skardu and Gultari are far to the northeast of the area of Pakistani Kashmir and neighbouring Northwest Frontier Province devastated by an earthquake on Oct. 8 that killed more than 73,000 people.

The quake zone has been hit by cold weather and snow since the weekend, raising fears for the health of more than two million people living in tents or crude shelters patched together from their ruined homes.

The disaster has prompted a massive international aid effort.

Aid workers expect a flood of new cases of respiratory infections from the quake zone once the weather allows people to venture out, but say there had been no spike in sickness or deaths related to the cold in the quake zone so far.