Kashmiris gear up for battle against cold
Ap, Karnah
Shivering in the autumn chill, 12-year-old Adil Khan and his younger brother collect wood and tin sheets from a heap of rubble. This was their home until a devastating earthquake hit Kashmir three weeks ago. The boys are helping their parents build a temporary shelter on the banks of a shimmering stream in Indian Kashmir. "It is spine-chilling when I think of winter," says their father, 50-year-old farmer Assadullah Khan. "Tents won't work. We have to make a shelter of tin sheets and wood that will protect us from the snow and the icy winds." The winter in the Himalayan region jealously divided between India and Pakistan is just weeks away and fears are growing for the fate of thousands of villagers in the rugged, remote and mountainous areas who have had no real shelter since the quake on struck on Oct. 8. The quake, the strongest to hit South Asia in a century, killed, at least 57,000 in Pakistani Kashmir and parts of northern Pakistan and more than 1,300 in Indian Kashmir. Winters are always brutal in this part of the world -- snowstorms and avalanches killed 300 in Indian Kashmir last season -- and the World Meteorological Organi-sation (WMO) predicts another tough one this year. Villages and districts are cut off from the rest of the world, sometimes for months. "Temporary shelter is the top priority now and we are running against time," says Indian army colonel P.S. Sisodiya. "Hopefully, we will make it before this valley gets cut off."
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