Food fears for flood survivors in Pakistan

DESPERATE survivors crushed into relief centres yesterday after Pakistan’s worst floods in living memory as officials feared a food crisis could compound the humanitarian disaster.

With over three million affected by the flooding, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told his cabinet to speed up relief work and estimate damages likely to present a headache for a cash-strapped government.

Record rains last week triggered floods and landslides that washed away entire villages and ruined farmland in one of the country’s most impoverished and volatile regions, already hard hit by Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.