The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Kan Bangla

Veiled mothers huddled with feverish babies in ruined Pakistani villages Thursday, as sickness started to bite among earthquake survivors who spent a freezing night beneath open skies.

In crumbled settlements that no aid workers had reached more than a day after the powerful quake that killed at least 215 people, shivering residents begged for shelter, food, medicine-or just any help at all.

"We had so few blankets to cover ourselves during the night that we only had one between six children," farmer Shahnawaz Khan told an AFP reporter who reached the remote southwestern village of Kan Bangla.

"The cold was so severe that some of our children have fallen ill," he said, pointing to some wailing infants as their mothers tried to provide them with warmth and comfort.

Khan said some 20 people died when their mud-brick, straw-roofed homes collapsed in the 6.4-magnitude quake, but said they had not had any contact from Pakistani authorities or aid groups.

The village, which lies about 35 kilometres (25 miles) from the historic hill town of Ziarat, is one of a cluster in impoverished Baluchistan province that were worst affected by the quake.

Jaan Baba, an injured elderly man, showed makeshift tents that villagers had constructed with whatever they could scavenge from the shells of their houses. His own house was reduced to a pile of rubble.