ISLAMABAD, October 17, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Ten-year-old Saima Mehtab, her face badly bruised, sits forlorn in silence at a makeshift care center. She does not know yet she is one of the thousands of children Pakistan will have to care for after its massive earthquake.

The traumatized girl, who still has blood in her right eye, has not been told that her father, mother and other family members lie buried under the debris in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir razed by the October 8 earthquake, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I was in the school when the building collapsed. Someone pulled me out of the rubble and I was brought here," Saima, surrounded by toys, said in the few words she could manage at a clinic meant for disabled children in the capital Islamabad.

With the death toll still rising from Pakistan's worst ever catastrophe, the government is racing to put orphaned children such as Saima in state-run facilities and care for them.

Chief military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said the number of orphans could run into the thousands.

Pakistani officials have said more than 53,000 people died in the 7.6-magnitude quake that flattened swathes of northeast Pakistan a week ago.

The government is still pondering how exactly to raise an entire orphaned generation but it is adamant on one point -- it will not let them be adopted.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said Monday, October 17, that the government could not allow adoption as it was too risky for children to enter the households of other families.

"The laws relating to adoption are very strict in Pakistan and the cabinet has decided that no private person or group will be allowed to adopt them," he told AFP.

"The government will fully take care of the orphans, but our priority is to locate parents and relatives of such children," Rashid said.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said Sunday, October 16, that hospitals have already been ordered not to allow anyone to adopt the children.

"Adoption of these children is completely banned," Aziz told reporters when he visited injured youngsters at Islamabad's Poly Clinic hospital.

Sardar Abdul Khaliq Wasi, the spokesman for the Pakistani Kashmir government, said a committee will register children who have been orphaned or left with disabilities.

"We have received requests from private groups and NGOs but we are extremely careful in handling this issue," Wasi said.

Humanitarian groups, hospitals and government officials have been flooded with inquiries from people moved by the plight of the earthquake orphans.

A spokesman for the private Edhi welfare center in Islamabad said it had received numerous calls from people, mostly Pakistanis, who wanted to adopt orphans.

A similar situation emerged after last year's tsunami tragedy in Muslim-majority Indonesia, which imposed restrictions on adoption amid fears that Christian groups would raise the children.

The Washington Post reported in January that a US missionary group planned to Christianize 300 Muslim children from the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Virginia-based WorldHelp raised money among evangelical Christians by presenting the tsunami as a rare opportunity to make converts in hard-to-reach areas.