A number of the demonstrators were arrested as they marched through the centre of the regional capital Muzaffarabad, the police chief of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Shahid Hassan, told AFP.

The protesters complained that police had beaten the crowd indiscriminately with canes and rifle butts and added that they were angry at being forced to move just a month after the quake made them homeless.

"If you beat adults, fine, but there were small children and they were also beaten," said a woman called Safia, who lost two daughters in the October 8 quake while one survived.

Hassan said the protesters were "ordered to leave the temporary camp because it was set up in the middle of the city and it did not have any proper sanitation or waste disposal facilities."

The camp at Jalalabad Park was visited one week ago by Pakistan's President Musharraf when he came to devastated Muzaffarabad for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

The protest came as aid officials struggle to contain an outbreak of acute diarrhoea at Muzaffarabad's main tent camp -- in the sports ground of the city's university -- and a number of other spontaneous settlements.

"We were shifting them to a proper camp with better living conditions but they did not agree," police chief Hassan added.

"Around 250 people protested, and police, in order to disperse them, used a mild baton charge. They arrested a few people and dispersed the rest of the crowd," he added.

The marchers were stopped because they were heading towards a "sensitive area" where a US military hospital for quake victims is located, said deputy police chief Tahir Qureshi.

"They were blocking traffic, they were told many times to behave, then the police officers had to resort to a baton charge to disperse them," Qureshi added.

"The camp where they are living has no sanitary facilities, no latrines and there was a danger of disease."

Residents of the camp, however, accused the police of being heavy handed.

"It was ruthless. We were not breaking the law, we were just going to the (Kashmiri) prime minister's house to protest," said Zamira Bibi, 45, breaking down in tears as she added that her husband had been taken away by police.

Syed Tariq Hussain, 33, said he and others were beaten with rifle butts and three people from his village were arrested.

"The police asked us early this morning to move, but where are we meant to go? We have small children and we have lost our houses, our property," he added.

Local authorities had imposed an order banning gatherings of more than five people to stop further trouble at the camp, where around 350 tents have sprung up.

United Nations agencies have launched a major operation to clean up the camps, which are growing daily as people come down from the mountains. There were fears the cause of the diarrhoea outbreak was cholera.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said a massive drive to immunise some 800,000 children in the quake zone against various potentially lethal diseases would begin at the weekend.

Teams would head into towns and mountain villages to administer vaccines for measles, polio, diphtheria and tetanus, as well as handing out vitamin A tablets as many were struggling to get enough food.

The 7.6-magnitude earthquake is confirmed to have killed 74,000 people in Pakistan and more than 1,300 in India. However humanitarian groups estimate the toll to be 86,000 in Pakistan alone.

UNICEF said earlier Friday that half of the dead were likely to be children, confirming fears that the disaster had claimed a "lost generation."

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