Another million flee Pakistan floods

27 Aug 2010, 5:22 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Pakistan's humanitarian crisis is deepening, with more than a million people evacuated in the past 48 hours alone as the Indus breaches levees in the south.

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing a southern district on Friday after the bloated Indus River crushed a levee and flooded news areas, officials said.

The UN said as many as one million people have been displaced in the south since mid-week.

The latest evacuations were ordered in Thatta district of Sindh province, the site of many historic graves, tombs and other sites linked to the Mughal Empire that once ruled the subcontinent.

In the city of Thatta, around 175,000 people - about 70 per cent of the city's population - were believed to have packed up and left overnight, said Manzoor Sheikh, a senior government official.

Authorities were trying to repair the broken levee and arranging transport for people trying to leave.

"We ordered people of Thatta city on Thursday night to move to safer places after floods breached an embankment at Faqir Jogoth village....

"We hope that the (army) engineers will be able to repair the breach or otherwise floodwaters will inundate Thatta city," Sheikh said.

He said the surrounding towns of Sujawal, Mirpur Bathoro and Darro, which had a combined population of 400,000, had already been evacuated.

UN spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said according to reports received by the world body, around one million people had been displaced in Thatta and Qambar-Shadadkot districts since Wednesday.

UN aid agencies along with a host of other relief groups have been rushing people and supplies to affected regions as the flooding has lashed Pakistan over the past month.

The situation in Sindh "is getting from bad to worse", Giuliano said.

"We are delivering (aid) faster and faster, but the floods seemed determined to outrun our response....

"There are serious concerns about rising malnutrition among children in the affected areas, although estimates are not available now because this is a long-term condition that takes time to develop," said Giuliano.

"It is estimated that before the floods, 72,000 children aged under five in the affected areas already suffered from severe acute malnutrition, which is deadly," he said.

"This is now likely to be on the rise, due to a vicious circle between disease and malnutrition."

He said that up to 20 per cent of children in the affected areas suffer from diarrheic diseases, causing dehydration and enhanced risk of malnutrition.

The floods began with the onset of the monsoon and have ravaged a massive swathe of Pakistan, from the mountainous north to its agricultural heartland.

Almost 17.2 million people have been significantly affected by the floods and about 1.2 million homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, the UN has said.

The Pakistani Taliban on Thursday hinted that they might attack foreign aid workers, a swelling number of whom have been landing in the country to help with the crisis. The militant network has a history of attacking aid groups, including agencies under the UN umbrella.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq claimed on Thursday that the US and other countries that have pledged support are not really focused on providing aid to flood victims, but had other motives he did not specify.

"Behind the scenes they have certain intentions, but on the face they are talking of relief and help.

"No relief is reaching the affected people, and when the victims are not receiving help, then this horde of foreigners is not acceptable to us at all."

He strongly hinted that the militants could resort to violence.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said the UN remained committed to helping flood victims in Pakistan.

"We will obviously take these threats seriously as we did before, and take appropriate precautions, but we will not be deterred from doing what we believe we need to do, which is help the people of Pakistan," he told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.

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