More than two days after the quake, which was recorded at a magnitude of 7.6 on the open-ended Richter scale, survivors were pulled from piles of concrete, steel, and wood in the mountains touching Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.
A man was rescued from a flattened two-story house in the Kashmir city of Muzaffarabad, two girls were plucked from a collapsed school in Balakot, northern Pakistan, and a woman and child were pulled from an apartment building in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, also in northern Pakistan.
Injured people were flown from remote areas, and Pakistan's army distributed rice to survivors.
President Pervez Musharraf said his government was doing its best to respond to the crisis. He has appealed for international help, and particularly for cargo helicopters, to reach areas cut off by landslides.
''We are doing whatever is humanly possible," Musharraf said. ''There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help."
Eight US helicopters, five of them Chinooks for transport and three of them Black Hawks for heavy lifting, were diverted from the war in Afghanistan.
The helicopters carried supplies, tarpaulins and equipment. The material included high-technology cameras for finding buried survivors.
Three military cargo planes, with blankets, tents, meals, and water, also arrived.
''Pakistan is one of our closest allies in the war on terror and we want to help them in this time of crisis," Sergeant . Marina Evans, a US military spokeswoman, said in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Washington pledged up to $50 million in aid, said the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker.
''We have underway the beginning of a very major relief effort," he said.
Pakistan also said it would accept aid from India, a longtime rival, which promised tents, food and medicine. However, Islamabad declined an offer of helicopters, and it has ruled out a joint rescue operation along the disputed frontier.
The nations fought two wars over Kashmir, a land in the foothills of the Himalayas, which both India and Pakistan claim. A 15-year insurgency opposed to New Delhi's rule has killed more than 66,000 people, mostly civilians.
India reported 865 deaths in its portion of the province.
