Anger erupts in Kashmir quake town

By Altaf Hussein BBC correspondent in Tangdar

The crowd outside Tangdar hospital was seething.

Saleem Ahmed said his family has been surviving on rain-water

"We have lost everything," they cried. "We're homeless. We have been spending the cold nights out in the open. Our cattle have died too."

I arrived in this border area of Indian-administered Kashmir to find people in a poor condition after Saturday's earthquake.

They were angry that they had not received any rations for the past three days - not from the authorities, nor from any non-governmental organisations.

Saleem Ahmed, who lost his son, says: "There were 20 bags of rice in a government-owned shop which collapsed. People took away the rice but could not cook it. We couldn't even salvage a cup."

He says his family had survived on rain water collected in a juice carton made of paper.

Collapse risk

Villagers who had travelled to the hospital on foot said they had used their bare hands to remove trapped people. Many bodies still lay buried under rubble, they said.

The quake's victims feel let down by the administration. Their biggest worry is that the aid to rehabilitate them may arrive too late.

"Winter is hardly a couple of weeks away," Ghulam Hyder says. "If the government has any relief for us, it should come before the snow-fall."

The local hospital is overwhelmed with casualties

All the locals acknowledge the help of the Indian army in evacuating casualties to hospital. They say more people might have died, had it not been for the army's help.

While I was outside the hospital, I saw a military lorry bringing three injured people for treatment.

The local administration has deployed 57 doctors and 100 paramedics in Tangdar to deal with the emergency.

Among them are female doctors who helped at least one woman deliver a baby a day after the earthquake.

But the damaged hospital presents an awful sight. An inside wall has fallen, its bricks and stones heaped in the passage.

A senior doctor, Mohammad Latief, says the "OPD [out-patients department] will collapse any time".

The x-ray machine and the operation theatre have been shifted to safer rooms.

Doctors' dilemma

Dr Latief says 1,400 patients were treated at the hospital in the three days after the calamity.

Indian army vehicles brought the wounded in for treatment

He says the hospital can perform minor surgeries and plasters, but serious cases are being referred to Srinagar.

The army and air force, he says, has air-lifted 120 patients to Srinagar on Sunday and Monday.

The border guards have augmented the medical effort in the hospital. But many people are angry that the medical teams have not gone into the villages.

On Monday, people in the village of Chitrakote attacked an ambulance and beat up two doctors and three paramedical staff besides looting all the medicines and other stuff.

The doctors have taken the incident in their stride.

They have another worry - the hospital cannot take in more than 30 patients. But patients who are being discharged after treatment are refusing to leave.

According to Dr Latief, this is because they have no homes to go to.

"We are helpless, we have to discharge them," he says.