Villagers desperate to find survivors dug with bare hands yesterday through the debris of a collapsed school where children had been heard crying beneath the rubble after a massive earthquake. Pakistani officials said the death toll ranged between nearly 20,000 and 30,000.

Pakistan's president called Saturday's magnitude-7.7 earthquake the country's worst on record and appealed for urgent help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas. Rival India, which reported more than 465 dead, offered assistance.

"I have been informed by my department that more than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir," Tariq Mahmmod, communications minister for the Himalayan region, told The Associated Press.

In mountainous Kashmir, the quake flattened dozens of villages and towns, crushing schools and mudbrick houses. The dead included 250

girls at a school razed to the ground and more than 200 Pakistani soldiers on duty in the Himalayas.

The quake was felt across a wide swath of South Asia from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh. It swayed buildings in the capitals of three nations, with the damage spanning at least 250 miles from Jalalabad in Afghanistan to Srinagar in northern Indian territory. In Islamabad, a 10-story building collapsed.

"We are handling the worst disaster in Pakistan's history," chief army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

Officials said Balakot was one of the hardest-hit areas. Near the ruins of one collapsed school, at least a dozen bodies were strewn on the streets of the devastated village of about 30,000. At least 250 pupils were feared trapped inside the rubble of the four-story school.

Dozens of villagers, some with sledgehammers but many without tools, pulled at the debris and carried away bodies. Faizan Farooq, a 19-year-

old business administration student, said he had heard children under the rubble crying for help immediately after Saturday's disaster.

"Now there's no sign of life," he said Sunday. "We can't do this without the army's help. Nobody has come here to help us."

Helicopters and C-130 transport planes took troops and supplies to damaged areas Sunday. However, landslides and rain hindered rescue efforts, blocking roads to some remote areas.

There was no sign of government help in Balakot, in the North West Frontier Province about 60 miles north of Islamabad. The quake leveled the village's main bazaar, crushing shoppers and strewing gas cylinders, bricks, tomatoes and onions on the streets.

Injured people covered by shawls lay in the street, waiting for medical care. Residents carried bodies on wooden planks. The corpses of four FROM PAGE 1

children, aged between 4 and 6, lay under a sheet of corrugated iron. Relatives said they were trying to find sheets to wrap the bodies.

"We don't have anything to bury them with," said a cousin, Saqib Swati.

Elsewhere in Balakot, shop owner Mohammed Iqbal said two primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, also collapsed. More than 500 students were feared dead.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf appealed to the international community for medicine, tents, cargo helicopters and financial assistance.

"We do seek international assistance. We have enough manpower but we need financial support ... to cope with the tragedy," Musharraf said in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital Islamabad, before touring devastated areas.

He told the British Broadcasting Corp. the only way to reach many far-flung areas was by helicopter because roads were buried by landslides.

"Our helicopter resources are limited," he told the BBC. "We need massive cargo helicopter support."

The president said he knew of as many as 20,000 people killed, but "I wouldn't be able to make an accurate assessment for days."

The United States, the United Nations, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey, Japan and Germany all offered assistance. An eight-member UN team of top disaster coordination officials arrived in Islamabad on Sunday to plan the global body's response.

In Pakistan's northwestern district of Mansehra, police chief Ataullah Khan Wazir said Saturday that authorities there pulled 250 bodies from the rubble of a girls' school in the village of Ghari Habibibullah. Dozens of chil-

dren were feared killed in other schools.

Mansehra was believed to be a hotbed of Islamic militant activity during the time the Taliban religious militia ruled neighbouring Afghanistan. Al-Qaida operatives trained suicide squads at a camp there, Afghan and Pakistani officials told The Associated Press in 2002.

At least 215 Pakistani soldiers died in Pakistan's portion of Kashmir, Sultan said. On the India side of the border, at least 54 soldiers were killed when their bunkers collapsed, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

The only serious damage reported in Islamabad was the collapse of a 10-story apartment building, where at least 24 people were killed and dozens were injured. Doctors said the dead included an Egyptian diplomat, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said two Japanese were killed.

On Sunday, Pakistani rescue teams pulled two survivors from the rubble. The boy and woman, who were listed in stable condition, told doctors others were trapped alive and calling for help beneath the debris.

"These people heard voices and cries during the whole night," said Adil Inayat, a doctor at PIMS hospital in Islamabad.

The death toll in India rose Sunday to 465 after rescue workers and soldiers pulled out 90 more bodies in the frontier Tangdar region, 65 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. Most of the deaths were in the border towns of Uri, Tangdar and Punch and Srinagar, where the quake collapsed houses and buildings.

Hundreds of angry villagers blocked roads in the region Sunday,

protesting the slow pace of rescue efforts. On the main road between Baramulla and the border town of Uri, locals demanded that journalists and soldiers with aid go to their mountainside villages.

"Everything is destroyed the ground shook and took everything down," said Syad Hassan, pointing toward the peaks surrounding the valley road. "All the government people, the press people, they are just driving past."

Most people in Jammu-Kashmir spent the night in the open, lighting fires with wood pulled out from fallen houses to keep warm in the nearfreezing temperatures.

Afghanistan reported four killed.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was cantered about 60 miles northeast of Islamabad, six miles below the forested mountains of Pakistani Kashmir. That was followed by at least 22 aftershocks within 24 hours, including a 6.2-magnitude temblor. Hospitals moved quake victims onto lawns, fearing more damage, and many people spent the night in the open.

India, a longtime rival of Pakistan, offered help and condolences in a gesture of cooperation. The nuclear rivals have been pursuing peace after fighting three wars since independence from British rule in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.

Afghanistan appeared to suffer the least damage. In its east, an 11-year-old girl was crushed to death when a wall in her home collapsed, police official Gafar Khan said. Three others also died.

The US military said the quake was felt at Bagram, the main American base in Afghanistan, but there were no reports of damage at bases elsewhere.