Rescue teams and ordinary citizens are working day and night - some using their bare hands - in a race against time to save trapped survivors.

Decorator, Ikhalaq Ahmed, was one of the lucky few to be dragged alive from the collapsed Margala Towers in the capital, Islamabad.

Mr Ahmed called relatives on a mobile telephone after being trapped in the rubble for more than 24 hours.

"I was just praying to God. I was fasting so I wasn't feeling thirsty and I never lost hope," Mr Ahmed said.

Twelve hours later, a 20-year-old was pulled out alive from the same collapsed apartment block - the only building in the Pakistani capital that was toppled by the quake..

"As they carried [him] past the crowd, he waved and everyone cheered. One of his feet was slightly injured but he looked happy," said witness Ambreen Durrani, whose aunt was still trapped beneath the rubble.

Stories of survival are fewer in the worst hit areas of Pakistani-administered Kashmir and the North-West Frontier province.

"It is God's will that my daughter has been taken, but my heart cannot accept the way she went," Mohammad Ramazan said after burying his 8-year-old daughter in Frontier province's Balakot town.

"I can't get her wounded face out of my mind."

Business executive, Moonis Ahmed, is among many who fear the worst for missing relatives.

"My mother, father and young sister are buried somewhere in the debris," he said.