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.

The UN has said another million people have been displaced in the last 48 hours in Pakistan.

THE world has given or pledged more than $800 million (€630m) to help Pakistan cope with massive floods, the foreign minister said as a surging river in the south led authorities to urge thousands more people to evacuate.

Murdered Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto will be laid to rest near her father in the family's ancestral village today.

Benazir Bhutto’s enraged supporters burned vehicles and attacked shops across Pakistan after the charismatic former prime minister was shot and killed today by an assassin as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle.

Karachi and other major Pakistani cities were hit by a general strike today in protest against violence that has left 41 dead.

Pakistan today rejected the US intelligence chief’s claims that Osama bin Laden and his deputy are hiding in the country, and that al-Qaida is setting up camps near the border with Afghanistan.

At least 11 people died in Pakistan when they were knocked off the roof of a crowded train or electrocuted after religious flags they were carrying to an Islamic festival became entangled in an overhead power line.

A powerful bomb exploded during evening prayers at a public park in southern Pakistan today, killing at least 32 people and injuring dozens more, witnesses and a doctor said.

A Pakistan air force jet crashed during a routine training flight in southern Pakistan today, but no one was hurt.

At least 129 people have died in recent sweltering temperatures in Pakistan, many of them in eastern Punjab province, the health ministry said today.

Pakistani authorities have arrested the alleged mastermind of a deadly bombing near the US Consulate in Karachi two years ago, but another key member of his network is still on the run, a senior official said today.

A bomb exploded outside a car dealer in southern Pakistan today, killing two people and wounding three.

Security was tightened in major Pakistani cities today after a suicide attack outside a mosque amid fears of sectarian violence as the Islamic country’s Shiite minority marked the religious holiday of Muharram.

The death toll from almost two months of monsoon rain and floods across South Asia topped 700 today as racing rivers and heavy downpours and winds hit India’s western desert states and Pakistan’s Sindh province.

SUNSTROKE and dehydration claimed another 160 lives in a southern Indian state, raising the death toll from a two-week heat wave to nearly 900, a relief official said.

SHOOT-OUTS between political rivals killed three people yesterday, marring the first general elections in Pakistan since a 1999 military coup led by President Pervez Musharraf ended democratic rule.

From the rugged northern frontier to the teeming southern port of Karachi, Pakistanis began voting today in the first general election since a coup in 1999 ended democratic rule.

Pakistan has handed over to US authorities about 20 Arabs arrested last week in raids on suspected al Qaida hideouts, a senior intelligence official said today.

Two bombs have exploded killing two people in Karachi as a strike called by two militant ethnic-based parties paralysed Pakistan's Sindh province.