The death toll from a massive 7.6-magnitude earthquake that hit Pakistan on Saturday has risen to more than 30,000 as rescuers scramble to reach the dead and injured left by the worst quake in the country's history.

The effects of the quake were felt from Afghanistan to western Bangladesh, but the most intense damage was in and around the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, where tens of thousands — and according to some reports, possibly several million — have been left homeless by the disaster. The epicenter of the quake was in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Kashmir, which is administered by Pakistan and is located 60 miles northeast of Islamabad.

More than 43,000 people were injured, according to CNN, and officials expect the numbers of dead and injured to rise as rescue workers reach remote villages that have been cut off by damaged roads. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, many villages were completely leveled and roads destroyed, prompting the country's government to request international assistance in surveying the area by air.

In the tourist town of Balakot, a CNN reporter said that nearly every building in the city of 250,000 had been destroyed, leaving survivors picking through the rubble with their bare hands in a frantic attempt to find friends and family. Relief and rescue workers have not yet been able to reach 30 to 40 percent of the affected areas, a military spokesman, Brig. Shah Jahan, told CNN.

Many of the victims in northern Pakistan are expected to be young children who were trapped in schools that collapsed when the quake struck at 8:50 a.m. on Saturday.

The United States has already pledged up to $50 million in aid to the region and has sent relief supplies as well as eight military helicopters to help with search-and-rescue operations. The United Nations warned that more than 2.5 million people might be in need of shelter, according to an Associated Press report, with thousands more sleeping in the open in near-freezing temperatures as they await rescue. Officials believe the number of those left homeless by the quake rivals that of last year's deadly South Asian tsunami.

Pledges of aid and planes bearing supplies have also arrived from Turkey, Britain, Japan, Russia, China, Germany and the United Arab Emirates, according to The New York Times.

Much of the affected area — which has been rattled by more than 140 aftershocks — is without food, water and power, and there were reports of sporadic looting on Monday (October 10) as hungry citizens lost patience with the slow arrival of relief supplies. The AP has reported shopkeepers battling looters with sticks and stones in Muzaffarabad in the absence of police. Doctors warned that the diseases may spread if clean drinking water and relief supplies do not reach the most seriously affected areas within the next few days.

Even in the midst of the disaster, Pakistan declined an offer from neighbor India — which itself has suffered more than 860 deaths — to join in a joint rescue operation for victims in the disputed region of Kashmir. The countries have fought three wars and had frequent border clashes since they were partitioned in 1947.