Pakistan on ‘war footing’ to save city

PAKISTANI troops and workers were on a “war footing” as they battled to save the southern city of Thatta after most of the population of 300,000 fled advancing flood waters.

Torrential monsoon rains have triggered massive floods that have moved from north to south over the past month, engulfing a fifth of the volatile country and affecting 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province, with 19 of its 23 districts ravaged as flood waters swell the raging Indus river to 40 times its usual volume.

One million people have been displaced over the past few days and hundreds of thousands have already fled Thatta alone ahead of the approaching torrents as soldiers work frantically to repair breached levees.

“The water is still two kilometres away from Thatta where the armed forces and the local administrative workers are working on war footing to save the city,” senior city official Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro told AFP.

“Almost all the people have left Thatta to safer places, all shops and schools are closed,” he said.

Water levels were still rising in the district, but Kalhoro said: “We are hopeful that we can save at least Thatta city in two days.”

An AFP reporter said the road linking Thatta with the town of Sujawal had been flooded while Kalhoro said an electricity grid station near Sujawal had flooded.

The military said its engineers had repaired an important embankment in the south and were trying to protect the highway linking Thatta with the main southern city of Karachi.

The Pakistani government has been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster, the worst in the country’s history, with millions in need of tents and food and medical aid.

But Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza said people were reluctant to go to relief camps because they feared there would not be enough supplies. “People are not going to relief camps because they’re afraid of the lack of food and medicine there,” he told reporters.

“In Karachi we’ve set up a camp for 40,000 people, but so far not a single (displaced person) has turned up there,” he said.

Aid agencies are worried about the growing danger of malnutrition and water-borne disease, with children especially vulnerable.

Oxfam warned yesterday that reconstruction efforts must begin immediately to prevent the disaster from becoming a long-term catastrophe.