Pakistan flood crisis ‘daunting’ warns UN

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.

The nearly two-week-old disaster has affected 4.5 million across the largely impoverished country hard hit by Taliban-linked violence, after floods washed away entire villages and killed at least 1,600, according to UN estimates.

Authorities in the densely populated southern province of Sindh were busy evacuating villagers, warning that major floods in the next 48 hours threatened hundreds of communities in the fertile basin along the swollen Indus river.

“It is a real crisis all over the country,” military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

“We do not have the resources to cope with a situation like this and I think the international community should come to our help.”

Bedraggled women, children and elderly men in shabby clothes were deposited on the banks by rescue boats criss-crossing a giant lake dotted by tree tops in the village of Durrani Mehar in northern Sindh.

The meteorological office issued a red alert overnight, warning of an “imminent” and “extreme” flood threat to Sindh, especially along the Indus, as flooding spread to Indian-held Kashmir, where over 100 people have now died.

Torrential rains were also forecast in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the disaster management authority warned people who have returned to partially damaged homes or those living along rivers to be careful.

“The scale of the needs is absolutely daunting,” said Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

“At least 11 districts are at risk of flooding in Sindh, where more than 500,000 people have been relocated to safer places and evacuation still continues,” said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

More than 252,000 homes are thought to have been damaged or destroyed across Pakistan, and 1.38 million acres of crop land flooded, and it could take weeks before electricity is fully restored.

“Our cattle died and the cotton crop destroyed,” said Mohammad Bakhsh, 50, a resident of Qasim Ghot village.

“I’ve got calls on my mobile saying 20 to 25 children from our family are stranded in the village and are holding on to tree branches.

“We are begging the authorities to rescue them. Two of my children have drowned and we don’t know where they are,” Bakhsh said.