RESCUE worker Ian Ablett today told how he helped pull two people alive from a destroyed block of flats in Pakistan.

His team worked for 15 painstaking hours to rescue a 75-year-old grandmother and her 55-year-old daughter from the ruins of 10-storey building in the devastated city of Islamabad yesterday.

The pair had survived without food or water for three days crouched in a tiny space among the rubble after a massive earthquake struck the country early on Saturday.

Father-of-two Mr Ablett, 53, of Sycamore Road, Southill, Weymouth, is part of a 25-strong team from UK search and rescue charity Rescue and Preparedness in Disasters (RAPID), which arrived in Pakistan hours after the quake hit.

Speaking from Islamabad, he said: "Yesterday we managed to pull two people out alive who were buried under the rubble of Margalla Tower block. It was a 75-year-old woman and her daughter.

"It took the team 15 hours to pull them out. So far the mission has been successful and I am still hopeful we will find some more people alive."

The team of rescuers are using hi-tech cameras and lifting equipment to search for survivors under the wreckage of the apartment block.

Mr Ablett today visited an RAF base to secure a helicopter so that food and aid can be sent to the worst hit parts of Pakistan where the relief effort is failing to get through. He said: "We have stayed in Islamabad, which has not been as badly hit as further north.

"The situation is horrendous there. It is very difficult to send help or supplies there as the infrastructure has been destroyed.

"There aren't even the roads to transport water further north."

The death toll from the quake - which measured 7.6 on the Richter scale - stands at 23,000 but is still rising and some officials believe it could reach 40,000.

Millions have been left homeless after who communities were flattened in the disaster.

Mr Ablett works as an electrical engineer at BHC, Granby Industrial Estate, Weymouth, and has been an unpaid volunteer with RAPID for six years.

Last Christmas, he travelled to Bam, Iran, where an earthquake hit the city on Boxing Day.