Pakistan seeks international aid for flood victims
Pakistan today called on the international community to rush aid to one million people left homeless by massive flooding amid forecasts that still more rain would be dumped on the stricken areas in coming days.
Floods due to a cyclone and rain have left as many as 100 people dead in south-western Pakistan, a senior relief official said, but unofficial estimates are considerably higher.
Some 500 people have died across the subcontinent – in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan – since the start of the monsoon season.
Following a two-day tour of the flooded area yesterday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz asked for relief and rehabilitation aid from foreign countries, international agencies and private donors.
He said more helicopters would be added to army efforts to ferry food, medicine and other relief supplies to areas of Baluchistan province which was hit by Cyclone Yemyin last Tuesday.
The flooding also has spread into adjacent Sindh province to the east, where some 20,000 people were rendered homeless in Shahdad Kot district after waters from a canal spilled over protective embankments, said provincial relief commissioner Munir Ahmed.
Tariq Ayub, Baluchistan’s home secretary, who is overseeing the flood relief operation, said many of the casualties occurred due to drowning and people getting trapped under the debris of their collapsing homes in 13 hardest-hit Baluchistan districts.
Among the dead were 42 people who drowned on Saturday in a stream flooded by rains and waters from a breached dam in Khuzdar district, Ayub said.
He said more than 100 other people were missing in the area.
The state-run Pakistan Meteorological Department forecast “widespread heavy rains” and storms in both Sindh and Baluchistan over the next four days.
