A CHOLERA epidemic is spreading in famine-hit Somalia, with alarming numbers of cases among people driven to the capital Mogadishu by a lack of food and water, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

Health workers said the number of people confirmed dead from cholera in Haiti is almost 200 with more than 2,300 sick.

PAKISTAN ordered 300,000 people to evacuate a southern city after waters breached its defences as the United Nations warned yesterday the country’s worst humanitarian crisis was deepening.

PAKISTAN battled yesterday to save areas threatened by more devastating flood waters as the United Nations warned that 800,000 people in desperate need of aid had been cut off by the deluge.

THE United Nations warned yesterday that up to 3.5 million children were at risk from water-borne diseases in Pakistan’s floods and said it was bracing for thousands of potential cholera cases.

The United Nations launched an appeal to raise almost $460m (€357m) for flood-hit Pakistan tonight.

The Government is donating a further €550,000 to help the aid effort in Pakistan.

PAKISTAN battled to contain flooding in its rich agricultural south yesterday, evacuating half a million people from risk areas as the UN warned of the “daunting” scale of the crisis.

PAKISTAN began evacuating half a million people from flood-risk areas in the south yesterday as the overall number hit by the country’s worst floods in living memory rose to more than four million.

US MILITARY helicopters swooped down on Haiti’s wrecked presidential palace to deploy troops and supplies yesterday as a huge international relief operation to earthquake survivors gained momentum.

The first humanitarian convoy to go behind rebel lines since violence erupted in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo more than two months ago set off today.

Haiti needs an immediate boost in relief funding to help hundreds of hungry people still living in shelters nearly two months after a string of devastating tropical storms, the UN humanitarian chief said.

International aid began to trickle into Burma, but the stricken Irrawaddy delta, the nation’s rice bowl where 22,000 people perished and twice as many are missing, remained cut off from the world.

UN and private aid agencies today raced to prepare aid for victims of the devastating cyclone in Burma, but were awaiting a go-ahead from the ruling junta.

Torrential rains and floods have hit up to 1.8 million people in the Horn of Africa, driving tens of thousands from their homes and threatening to trigger epidemics, UN aid bodies warned yesterday.

UN agencies, governments and aid organisations rushed emergency supplies to Indonesia today to lay the groundwork for a coordinated humanitarian response to this weekend’s deadly earthquake as the death toll hit 5,000.

The UN today became the latest international agency to caution that Israel and the West stand to unleash a crisis in Palestinian territories by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and tax transfers.

More than 700 people suffering from pneumonia, hypothermia and other illnesses are being treated at hospitals today as the onset of winter in Pakistani Kashmir took its toll on the 3.5 million people who lost their homes in last month’s devastating earthquake.

The Irish Government today pledged €10m to a new United Nations emergency fund for humanitarian aid.

The Government has pledged €1m in aid to Pakistan and surrounding regions which were hit by today’s earthquake.

GANGS of militia have attacked five villages in south-eastern Congo, raping girls as young as eight years old and forcing more than 1,000 people to flee, a UN official said yesterday.

Fighting in eastern Congo, where thousands are dying every month, has made the crisis the worst humanitarian situation in the world, overtaking Sudan’s embattled Darfur region, the UN’s humanitarian chief said today.

Six weeks after the Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy, the UN has received little more than a third of tsunami aid funding pledged by governments, a senior official said today.

Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints within the West Bank are preventing Palestinians from obtaining health care and endangering the entire Palestinian emergency medical system, according to a report.

A GROUP of UN agencies is asking for $221 million in international aid for North Korea, where food shortages, poverty and poor health care services have put the country in a state of “chronic emergency”, an agency spokesman said yesterday.