More than 42,000 others were injured in Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake that unleashed its worst fury on Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, wiping entire towns off the map and burying victims in tombs of mud and rubble.

"It is such a horrendous situation that one cannot imagine," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told a news conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. "Casualties are increasing by the hour."

As national and international rescue teams raced against time to find survivors and cope with the injured, Sherpao said at least 19,136 people were already confirmed dead and 42,397 had been hurt.

President Pervez Musharraf appealed urgently for money and helicopters to get aid to the worst affected zones -- the rugged terrain of the North West Frontier Province and the towering Himalayan mountains of Kashmir.

"We do seek international assistance," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press of Pakistan.

"There is a need for large supplies of medicines, tents and cargo helicopters to reach out to the people in far-flung and cut-off areas. The bigger these 'copters, the better."

Musharraf's chief spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, said the death toll could continue to soar, and an official in Pakistani-held Kashmir said the eventual toll in that region could top 30,000.

"It is the biggest-ever disaster in the history of Pakistan," Sultan told AFP.

In the Indian sector of Kashmir, an official said more than 600 people had been killed there and the number was likely to rise, pushing the total confirmed death toll close to 20,000.

The United Nations said the relief needs were massive and warned that, with many roads blocked by landslides, aid and rescue teams had difficulties reaching the worst affected areas.

UN Undersecretary Jan Egeland told AFP in a phone interview that there was a great need for helicopters.

"We need helicopters because the roads are gone," Egeland said.

"The requirements that we are gradually being made aware of are awesome -- in terms of shelter, in terms of water sanitation, in terms of health," Gerhard Putnam-Cramer, a veteran UN relief expert, said in an interview with CNN.

"There's a huge need for field hospitals and also of course for food. But the roads, as you may know, have been broken in a variety of places," he said. "They're under repair but that may take a number of days."

Sherpao, Pakistan's interior minister, said around 11,000 of his country's dead were in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistan-controlled sector of Kashmir.

"There are cities, there are towns which have been completely destroyed," said the local minister for works and communication, Tariq Farooq. "Muzaffarabad is devastated."

The earthquake struck Saturday morning as schools were beginning classes, and hundreds if not thousands of children are feared to have died when buildings collapsed or were engulfed by landslides.

In the town of Balakot, one of those hardest hit in North West Frontier Province, one school collapsed with its students inside.

Witnesses and an AFP reporter said the smell of death had engulfed the site. Residents said the cries of children that had been heard throughout the day, coming from underneath the debris, had fallen silent.

Landslides blocked the steep mountain roads and powerful aftershocks sowed terror among survivors, dislodging huge boulders from further up the hillsides. Rain, hail and freezing temperatures added to the misery.

"Our priority is to open the roads and remove the dead and the injured," Interior Minister Sherpao said, adding that a three-day period of nationwide mourning had been declared from Sunday.

The scale of the disaster has shocked the international community and brought pledges of aid and expressions of sympathy.

Officials said surgeons were being despatched to Kashmir along with nine helicopter loads of emergency aid. They said bad weather and the destruction of infrastructure was severely affecting relief efforts.

The epicentre was close to the dividing line between Indian and Pakistani controlled zones of Kashmir, and scores of soldiers on both sides died when their heavily-fortified positions collapsed around them.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, but a peace process is under way and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh immediately reached out to Musharraf to offer help.

The World Bank offered 20 million dollars while the Asian Development Bank pledged 10 million dollars in immediate aid and assistance.

Japan said it had sent a 50-strong emergency relief team and Britain, which has a large South Asian community, said it was sending an initial 100,000 pounds (176,000 dollars) and a 60-strong rescue and relief team.

US President George W. Bush offered "to help in any way we can." He said eight US helicopters were being dispatched to Pakistan as a first step.

For some, the effort succeeded in time. Amid loud cheers for rescue workers, a 20-year-old was pulled out alive Sunday almost 36 hours after the quake collapsed the 10-storey Margalla Towers apartment block in Islamabad. A woman and a child were earlier freed from the wreckage of the same building.

But for others, there was only desperate hope and fears for the worst.

"My mother, father and young sister are buried somewhere in the debris," said business executive Moonis Ahmed.

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