Thousands of people streamed back to the historic southern city of Thatta today where new levees hastily built from clay and stone held back floodwaters that have inundated much of Pakistan.

Floodwaters inundated a large town in southern Pakistan today, spreading further destruction in an area where hundreds of thousands of people who fled to higher ground are in dire need of food and water.

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.