A nation in mourning as earthquake relief pours in

Afghanistan observed a day of official mourning on Thursday as relief work gathered pace for the thousands of victims of a series of powerful earthquakes that killed hundreds in the north of the country and made tens of thousands homeless this week.

Aircraft full of blankets, tents, emergency relief supplies and medicines continued to make their way from the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif to the worst affected districts of Nahrin and Burka in the northern Baghlan province, the scene of massive destruction where strong aftershocks continue to keep residents and aid workers nervous.

"There have been 18 aftershocks recorded today so far," Safiullah, an official of Pakistan's Seismological Office told IRIN from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. "But they were below 3.5 on Richter scale, so not threatening," he added.

The joint relief effort by the United Nations, aid agencies and the Afghan authorities, is working on a planning figure of 20,000 families affected in one way or another by the series of quakes.

"Aid is effectively being distributed and immediate needs have been met," Rebecca Richards, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN in the Afghan capital, Kabul. She said now longer-term needs were being looked into.

"A four-member UN Disaster Assessment Team has been sent today to be deployed in the region," she added. The team members will thoroughly assess the situation and will be based in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif and the district of Nahrin itself, whose centre has been completely razed.

UN spokesman for Afghanistan Manoel de Almeida e Silva told reporters in Kabul that a measles vaccination campaign going on in the area and suspended due to the earthquake had been resumed on Wednesday.

"I saw massive destruction there, houses flattened out," e Silva said after visiting the area on Wednesday. Most of the houses in the area were single-storey mud and stone hamlets.

Richards said two plane loads of supplies were sent from Kabul to the north, which included tents, blankets, surgical instruments, hospital beds, water purification tablets and food.

Government officials initially put the projected death toll at well over 2,000. The United Nations later revised this down to between 800 and 1,000 and Richards said this estimate had not been changed.

E Silva said aerial surveys suggested about 90 percent of the houses in the central Nahrin district were damaged, with some 60 percent suffering heavy damage or totally destroyed.

Nahrin, a town of mud-brick buildings, was on the front line of battles between the then ruling Taliban and the opposition Northern Alliance under a year ago. Land mines remain a problem. Most of the residents of Nahrin were internally displaced people who had fled from fighting.

"It was a big tragedy for them," said Daudzai, director of an Afghan NGO, which works with international NGO's to carry out development and relief work.

Daudzai said the Afghan authorities had received offers of help from other provinces and there has been interest by Afghans settled abroad who want to know how they can help.