Police in Pakistan yesterday arrested a doctor for allegedly raping a young woman who was injured in the giant South Asian earthquake, officials said.

Maqsood Ahmed was detained after the 18-year-old Kashmiri's parents complained that he had sexually assaulted their daughter at the Mayo hospital in the eastern city of Lahore, police said.

"The accused, doctor Maqsood Ahmed, has been arrested on allegations of raping a patient at hospital," senior Lahore police official Amir Zulfiqar said.

"A special interrogation team has been set up which would complete its work in two weeks," he added.

The woman's uncle said she had been in a special ward for quake victims at the hospital, Lahore's biggest. The doctor said he was taking her to another room for an X-ray but instead he raped her, the uncle said.

The girl reported the matter to nurses in the ward and they informed hospital chief Fayyaz Ranjha, but he took no action, the uncle added.

Provincial officials said that Ranjha had been asked to explain why he failed to report the matter to police.

The October 8 disaster killed nearly 74,000 people in Pakistan and left about the same number severely injured.

A senior officer confirmed the incident with hospital authorities, who said the physician has been suspended and a five-member board of inquiry established to examine the case.

The doctor accused in the case went missing but was arrested yesterday in a raid on a house and taken in for questioning. He was the medical officer for a special ward set up for quake victims.

The alleged victim, who has made a recorded statement to police, tearfully said that the doctor asked her to bring her X-ray and other reports to his room, which he then locked before assaulting her.

"I resisted a lot, but he threatened to kill me," she said.

Meanwhile, fire engulfed a tent in which earthquake survivors were sleeping, killing seven members of the same family including four children, police said yesterday.

The cause of the blaze on Tuesday night in Banser village in North West Frontier Province was believed to have been a candle or an electrical short circuit, said police official Mohammad Nadeem.

"They were asleep in a tent in the courtyard of their house," Nadeem said.

Four of the victims were dead when police arrived at the scene and three of them died later in a field hospital, he said.

The four children killed in the fire were aged between three and eight. Their mother and two grandparents were also killed. An eight-year-old daughter was injured, Nadeem said.

PHOTO CAPTION

A bus stuck in a land slide near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. (AFP)