There have been at least 200 cases and possibly as many as 750 at one camp for homeless quake survivors in Pakistani Kashmir, amid fears that it could be cholera, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF said.

"Rain would be disastrous," WHO emergency coordinator Rachel Lavy told AFP at the main camp on the sports ground of the devastated university in Muzaffarabad, the regional capital, where around 3,000 people are living.

"Diarrhoeal illness and rain water go hand in hand," she said.

Aid workers said they had succesfully treated existing cases and they were now focusing on prevention by teaching people how to keep clean, setting up an isolation tent for the sick and digging latrines.

Lavy said there were at least 200 cases of acute watery diarrhoea at the camp in the last five days, including 55 reported on Tuesday and 77 the following day. There have been no deaths so far.

Claudia Hudspeth, UNICEF's head of operations in Pakistani Kashmir, estimated that around 25 percent, or 750 people, at the university ground camp had been affected.

"If there is rain it will escalate the situation," she told AFP. "The hygiene situation is terrible in the camp. There is open defecation, kids are playing around -- it is quite a mess."

She added that there were more than 30 camps throughout Muzaffarabad, all of which could be affected and most of which did not have adequate sanitation and water supplies.

UN officials say the symptoms closely fit the definition of cholera but add that there are other waterborne microbes that could cause the condition.

"In a way it does not matter what it is, because acute watery diarrhoea is serious. The main thing is that we have to prevent the spread of disease," the WHO's Lavy added.

Light rain -- the first for six days -- started in quake-hit northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir early Thursday, while snow is expected at night, the Pakistani meteorological department said.

"All earthquake affected areas will have intermittent rain today and Friday," a spokesman for the department said.

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