Thursday, October 20 2005 18:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Muzaffarabad (PoK): Cooking fires at the end of the daily Ramadan fast are like distress signals in this city, as the homeless, hungry and wounded survivors of last week's earthquake celebrate a sorrowful Iftar.

Thousands of families live in tents, or in the rubble of their destroyed homes, or just out in the open with whatever shelter they can find. More people arrive every day from cut-off villages in the surrounding mountains.

Those without the means to cook for themselves eat whatever handouts they have received from the Pakistani Government and international aid donors. Officials said 10,000 people soon would be getting two free meals daily.

Thousands more people queue each night at charity kitchens for a bowl of rice. Many have walked for days from isolated villages, looking for help, complaining that the aid helicopters and army mule trains never arrived.

"My family hasn't eaten for 48 hours, and we've been walking for a whole day to get here," said Roxana, a 24-year-old mother-of two, after she broke her fast with her family at a rice kitchen run by a local aid group.

She is one of about 3,000 people who celebrated Iftar-the 'feast,' which ends the daily fast at sundown, with a bowl of rice from the Al-Mustafa Welfare Society here last night (Oct 19, 2005).

They arrive at dusk and sit on the concrete floor outside the society's makeshift kitchen in groups of about 400 at a time. Each group waits patiently until everyone has received their share, then wolfs down the food in a couple of minutes and makes way for the next.