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NAHRIN, Afghanistan, Friday (Reuters) Driving rain swept across earthquake-shattered northern Afghanistan on Friday, further disrupting aid efforts already hampered by the threat of land mines and aftershocks.

The freezing rain, forecast to last several days, turned dirt roads into quagmires and threatened to prevent landings by U.S. military and other helicopters that have been crucial to getting food, water, medicine and tents to thousands of homeless.

The confirmed death toll four days after a killer series of earthquakes began on Monday night, mainly centred around the town of Nahrin, was about 800 with some 500 people seriously injured.

An estimated 20,000 were camped in the open on freezing hillsides outside Nahrin fearful of returning to the town because near non-stop aftershocks were bringing down mud buildings that had survived the original quakes.

"This has turned into a logistical nightmare," a foreign aid worker on the spot said. "Rain is the last thing we needed. These poor people."

But there was good news from a team of U.S. engineers who cleared the Salang Tunnel of several overturned vehicles that had slowed traffic to a crawl. The tunnel is the world's highest at 3,363 metres (11,034 feet) and the vital route from Kabul through the Hindu Kush mountains to the north.

"That operation allowed convoys of relief supplies to make it to the earthquake area, including a convoy with a German mobile hospital," U.S. military spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty told a news conference at Bagram Air Base, just north of Kabul.

U.S. and British Chinook helicopters had ferried 200,000 pounds (90,900 kg) of aid, including rice, beans, wheat, dates, water, blankets, tents and medical supplies to Nahrin, Hilferty said.

International aid agencies have managed to get aid supplies to a central distribution point in Nahrin, but the greater challenge is to get them to the scattered population of about 80,000 in the surrounding district.

"The aid is here, but it is difficult getting it to people," a U.N. spokesman said.

"People are fearful of coming back into the town because of aftershocks, so they are staying on open hillsides."

Interim leader Hamid Karzai, who visited Nahrin on Wednesday and promised the survivors everything would be done to help them, has taken personal charge of the Afghan side of the relief effort putting off a trip to Turkey scheduled for Tuesday.

The tragedy has become a test of Karzai's leadership skills in a nation split down many ethnic and other lines.

Despite the rain, getting uncontaminated water to the survivors was a key priority.

Even before Friday's rain, rivers were muddy and contaminated in an area which is in its fourth year of drought.

Some people from outlying villages devastated by the quakes came with donkeys to haul food and blankets back to their shattered homes.

Landmines, the legacy of years of civil war in which Nahrin, 100 miles (160 km) north of Kabul, was once on the front line, complicated the task and threatened to become a greater hazard because of the rain.

The earthquake brought some mines closer to the surface and the rain was washing away the soil on top of the killer weapons.

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