The UN launched an urgent appeal Tuesday for more helicopters to deliver aid to those people reachable only by air, after floods triggered by a **not allowed** of monsoon rains washed away bridges and vital access roads.
“As monsoon floods continue to displace millions in southern Pakistan, an estimated 800,000 people in need across the country are only accessible by air,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said.
Pakistan's worst humanitarian catastrophe has affected more than 17 million people, with five million still homeless, according to the UN, while officials warn that millions are at risk from disease and food shortages.
Around 1,500 people have been confirmed dead by Pakistani authorities.
“These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community,” said John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
Global pledges have topped 700 million dollars, but Pakistani and international relief officials have raised concerns about the slow pace of aid and Islamabad has warned that total losses could reach 43 billion dollars.
Pakistani officials have warned that the fertile southern plains in Sindh province face the risk of more flooding in the next few days as the major Indus river threatens to burst its banks.
“Hyderabad and large surrounding districts are still facing a threat,” Sindh's irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo told AFP.
“We are working on a war footing. This is an extraordinary flood and we are at war with the extraordinary floods.”
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from flood-threatened areas close to Hyderabad, a city of 2.5 million people on the lower reaches of the Indus, where more than 40 nearby villages have been swept away.
The minister said Tuesday that thousands of irrigation officials had been sent to build up river barriers at high-risk spots near the teeming city, but a full moon this week would speed up water flows and increase the risk of floods.
Barkaat Rizvi, spokesman for the Hyderabad district administration, told AFP the authorities had strengthened embankments between the river and the city's low-lying areas.
But he said residents were still leaving vulnerable areas for safe havens, adding: “Danger is still there.”
In Kotri, a western suburb of Hyderabad, the river has swelled from its normal width of 200 to 300 metres to almost 3.5 kilometres, local army spokesman Asad Ahmad Jalili told AFP.
Water lapped at a road in Jamshoro district that is normally six or seven kilometres from the river, an AFP correspondent witnessed. The roadside was dotted with the tents of those displaced by the disaster.
Three hundred miles further north, authorities were also battling to save the city of Shahdadkot from surging waters after most of its 100,000 residents had been moved to safety.
Some residents had to be forcibly evacuated as flood waters engulfed the nearby town of Qubo Saeed Khan, said Yaseen Shar, the top administrative official in Shahdadkot.
Pakistan's chief meteorologist Arif Mehmood said Tuesday that the flood risk remained high in the south, while waters had receded in hard-hit Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Tuesday that more than 3.5 million children were at risk from disease.
“As human misery continues to mount, we are seriously concerned about the spread of epidemic diseases,” he said.
Millions who have seen their homes wiped out in the month since the disaster first struck are surviving on aid handouts.
Marcus Prior of the World Food Programme said at least 40 extra heavy-lift helicopters were needed “to reach the huge numbers of increasingly desperate people with life-saving relief”, according to the Ocha statement.
He said the floods had now affected an estimated 17.2 million people, of whom at least eight million are believed to need life-saving humanitarian assistance, and over 1.2 million homes have been damaged or destroyed.
Pakistan officials are in talks with the International Monetary Fund in Washington amid reports Islamabad is asking the fund to ease the terms of a loan worth nearly 11 billion dollars.
Original Source...