Pakistan was battling huge odds to deliver aid to hungry and traumatised people marooned in the northeastern mountains after the weekend earthquake which killed up to 40,000 people.

The authorities estimate over two million people were made homeless by Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake which obliterated whole towns and villages in Pakistani-held Kashmir. Over 60,000 were injured, many seriously.

Sporadic looting broke out in the main Kashmiri town of Muzaffarabad as anger over the slow delivery of aid boiled over, but the overwhelmed government insisted it was moving as fast as possible.

Military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said late Monday the roads into the two worst-hit towns -- Muzzafarabad and Balakot -- had finally been cleared of landslides and relief trucks could begin arriving in numbers.

Survivors were facing an array of problems -- freezing overnight temperatures, rain, landslides, scarce food, little shelter, no communications networks and almost non-existent healthcare.

Pakistan has appealed for more helicopters to bring aid to the hardest-hit villages, most of which are nestled on forested slopes 10,000 feet (3,300 metres) high in the foothills of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

The United States responded by bringing eight choppers from neighbouring Afghanistan. The Afghan government also promised four helicopters, while Japan on Tuesday offered several transport helicopters to aid agencies.

The confirmed death toll stands at over 20,000 including nearly 1,000 in the Indian-held zone of Kashmir. But Pakistani officials and UN aid workers have told AFP the final toll is expected to be between 30,000 and 40,000.

An AFP reporter who flew over Pakistani-held Kashmir in a military helicopter described scenes of utter devastation. The ground was littered with the ruins of demolished houses.

In open fields, hundreds of people waited for help beside the dead and wounded.

Residents in some places dug with their bare hands to find their loved ones, while rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialist equipment hunted for survivors and set up field hospitals to cope with the injured.

The rescue effort received a symbolic morale boost when an Iraqi woman and her two-year-old son were pulled alive shortly before midnight Monday from the wreckage of an apartment building in Islamabad where they had been trapped for 60 hours.

The woman's faint cries led rescuers to an air pocket where she was found cradling her son. Pakistani soldiers and a British rescue team using sniffer dogs located the pair who were carried from the wreckage to cheers from crowds and rescuers.

Offers of aid continued to pour in from around the world. The United States said it had provided 50 million dollars, the World Bank offered 20 million dollars and the Asian Development Bank pledged 10 million dollars. The energy-rich Gulf states of Kuwait and United Arab Emirates offered 200 million dollars to countries struck by the earthquake.

Pakistan confirmed it had also accepted an offer of aid from neighbouring India, with which it has fought two wars over the disputed region of Kashmir.

Indian officials said more than 950 people had been killed in the Indian controlled part of Kashmir.

India's military, heavily deployed along the de facto border with Pakistan, have taken the lead in the relief work on the Indian side.

Indian army teams were trekking through rugged terrain in the two worst-hit northern areas of Uri and Tangdar, but many villages remained cut off. An estimated 5,000 homes were flattened.

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