The United States will dispatch another 20 helicopters to reinforce its fleet of 19 choppers already engaged in relief and rescue operation in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and northern Pakistan, the American envoy in Islamabad said on Thursday, according to DPA. Ryan C. Crocker told reporters at Pakistan Air Force (PAF) base in the garrison town of Rawalpindi that heavy machinery would also arrive at the country's main Karachi port in a few days to help clear and restore roads, badly damaged by landslides. The United States was the first country to move ten Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters from the Bagram base in neighbouring Afghanistan, a day after the massive 7.6 magnitude quake rocked parts of Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir region on October 8, that killed estimated 48,000 people and injured another 67,000. Crocker said a 36-bed field hospital would also be established in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in the next few days to treat injured persons. The U.S. envoy said that two ships carrying engineering equipment to clear the roads and buildings in quake-hit areas of rubble are to arrive in the port city of Karachi shortly. He said that the U.S. relief workers have so far distributed 1.2 million tons of goods in the quake-ravaged areas of Kashmir and northern Pakistan besides shifting to Islamabad some 1,900 seriously injured persons from these areas.
