[putza]

Pakistan floods 'affect 12 million'

Updated: 03:38, Saturday August 7, 2010



Pakistan says 12 million people have been affected by its worst floods for 80 years as monsoons threaten to bring more devastation.

Nadeem Ahmed, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said that figure only applied to the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and central Punjab provinces.Figures from the southern Sindh province were not yet available.Authorities have evacuated more than half a million people so far in the disaster and around 1,500 others are believed to have been killed.

The floods have spread as far south as Sindh, where hundreds of thousands of the country's poorest inhabitants live.Although 400 relief camps have been set up for evacuees, embankments and protective walls have been weakened by rain.The United Nations said at least 4.2 million people have been affected by the devastation.

Many of the victims are in eastern Punjab province, where numerous villages have been swallowed by rising water.'Monsoon rains continue to fall and at least 11 districts are at risk of flooding in Sindh,' said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

'More than 500,000 people have been relocated to safer places and evacuation still continues based on the Meteorological Department's alerts.'
Meanwhile in Indian Kashmir, at least 60 people have been killed after rainfall triggered flash floods causing widespread devastation.

The overnight floods tore through Leh, the main town in the Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region. At least 200 people were reported injured. Television footage showed earthquake-like scenes, with collapsed buildings, downed power lines and residents scrabbling through mud to dig survivors out of the rubble.

Tourism Minister Nawang Rigzin Jora said the number of deaths was likely to rise with dozens still missing and rescue workers unable to reach some of the affected districts nearby.The Indian air force has been deployed to help the rescue effort.