70 emergency doctors sent by France to Pakistan

France sent 70 doctors and medical supplies to Pakistan on Monday to help deal with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake there.

A French civil defense team dispatched on Saturday was delayed by transport problems and only expected to reach the Pakistani side of the Kashmir region on Monday, said a French diplomat who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The team included 20 rescue workers, two sniffer dogs and five search and logistics experts, the AP reports.

Aloysius John, head of the Asia and Middle East department at Caritas, said he had spoken by telephone to his organization's workers in Pakistan and they were overwhelmed by the scale of the catastrophe. The situation in the city of Batagram was chaotic, and doctors were treating patients in the street following the collapse of their hospital, he said. France planned a joint shipment with the Red Cross of 40 metric tons of equipment from cooking utensils to tents to help 1,600 families left homeless by the quake, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told France Inter radio. A.M.