Soldiers and medical teams are trying to reach villagers cut off after weeks of heavy snow in Afghanistan and Indian-administered Kashmir.
The region has been hit by a series of snowstorms and avalanches in what is being described as the coldest winter in decades.
Several hundred people have died in both countries as well as in areas of Pakistan in the past few weeks.
But there are fears the toll could be higher, particularly in Afghanistan.
Police and officials in the district of Saghar in the central Afghan province of Ghor say 300 people have died there because of the severe winter.
The BBC's Andrew North says there is no way of confirming the figures but adds that the district is completely cut off.
The road to Saghar is blocked by snow and food is said to be running out.
Children worst hit
Saghar has no doctor and is almost completely without medical help.
Officials say more than half of those who have died are children who have succumbed to pneumonia, whooping cough and measles. Some areas are still short of medicine.
The US military has begun dropping tonnes of food over Saghar taken from World Food Programme stocks, using Black Hawk helicopters normally used to flush out Taleban and al-Qaeda militants.
They say bad weather has prevented them from flying to the district until now.
On Thursday, WFP warned that Afghanistan faced potentially "catastrophic" floods once the snow melts.
Kashmir aid drop
In Indian-administered Kashmir, the Indian air force has begun air-dropping aid into remote villages cut off for the past week after a series of avalanches.
About 3,000 food packets and 400 blankets have been dropped into southern Kashmir, the region's inspector general of police told reporters.
Five more bodies were dug out of the snow in the village of Viltngnar, which was crushed by an avalanche, bringing the total dead to 157, Javed Makhdoomi said.
Indian army spokesman Lt Col VK Batra told AFP the teams will "provide medical facilities to the injured and the survivors".
Six villages in the southern district of Anantnag have been completely buried under the snow after the avalanche crushed houses.
In total more than 230 people have died in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The government has arranged air lifts for thousands still stranded along a key highway linking the state to the rest of India.
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