Aid agencies sounded the alarm on Tuesday at the slow international response to appeals for money to help victims of the Pakistan earthquake in which the United Nations (UN) says more than 32,000 children may have died. The Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which coordinates UN relief work, said it had received only five percent of the $272 million for which it appealed last week. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ? the world's largest disaster relief network ? said it had only 25 percent of the 73 million Swiss francs sought.

?We are worried that this trend will not allow us to fully support the Pakistan Red Crescent's ongoing relief operation to initially assist tens of thousands of families over the next four months,? said Susan Johnson, director of operations at the Geneva-based Federation. The Federation usually receives pledges from donors for ?more funds more quickly? for disasters of this magnitude, it said in a statement. The quake 10 days ago killed at least 41,000 people in Pakistan and injured more than 60,000.

But the UN Children's Fund, which was estimating 50-60 percent of the dead were children, said it feared more than 32,000 young people had died. Another 42,000 were injured. ?People are coming down from the mountains saying villages and schools have been wiped out. It is more than 60 percent,? said United Nations International Children?s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) spokesman Damien Personaz, although UNICEF had no overall death toll. ?And this figure is going to rise. It is clear that children were the main victims.?

Besides the $15 million received in cash, OCHA spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs said the UN had some $45 million in pledges. ?We need this money as soon as possible in cash,? she said. The lack of money had not yet hurt the relief effort because international agencies were drawing on reserves to finance their operations, she added. Byrs said the UN appeal was only part of the international response and that some $165 million had been raised elsewhere, including through direct bilateral donations from other states.Aid-in-kind ? donations of food, material and medicines -- were also not included in the UN figures, she added. The top priority was tents for the hundreds of thousands of people left without shelter as winter approaches in the mountainous region of northern Pakistan where the quake struck on October 8, Byrs said.

Thousands of survivors were still living in the open in cold night temperatures, ?some with open or gangrened injuries and with little access to clean water?, the Federation said.

Richard WADDINGTON