Pakistan flood toll tops 1,000 as cholera emerges

[Musafira]

by Lehaz Ali – 2 mins ago http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100801...nweatherfloods


PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – The death toll from Pakistan's worst floods in living memory topped 1,000 Sunday as outbreaks of waterborne disease emerged and penniless survivors sought refuge from the raging torrents.
More than 1,000 people have been killed by monsoon rains, flash floods and landslides in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkwa and at least another 47 have died in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, officials said.
Up to one million people have been affected, according to the United Nations, with thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland destroyed in a region of Pakistan reeling from years of extremist bloodshed.
"This is the worst flood in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the country's history," said provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain.
Hussain told AFP that "more than 1,000 people have been killed by floods in different parts of the province.
"At least 713 people died in Peshawar, Nowshera and Charsada while the death toll in Shangla and Swat districts is over 300," he added.
A senior official at the provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) confirmed the toll.
Hundreds of survivors sought shelter in schools in Peshawar, the main city in northwest Pakistan, and in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, after escaping the floods with children on their backs.
In neighbouring Afghanistan, flash floods killed at least 65 people and affected more than 1,000 families, officials said.
Pakistani television footage and photographs taken from helicopters showed people clinging to the walls and rooftops of damaged houses as water rushed through villages.
Muqqadir Khan, 25, who fled the floods with nine relatives, told AFP in Peshawar that he had lost everything.
"I laboured hard in Saudi Arabia for three years and set up a small shop which was swept away by flooding in minutes," Khan said.
Pakistan's weather bureau said an "unprecedented" 312 millimetres (12 inches) of rain had fallen in 36 hours in the northwest but forecast only scattered showers would fall during coming days.
More than 300 people hit by floods rallied in Peshawar on Sunday, chanting slogans against the provincial government for not providing them adequate shelter, an AFP reporter witnessed.
"I had built a two-room house on the outskirts of Peshawar with my hard-earned money but I lost it in the floods," said 53-year-old labourer Ejaz Khan, who joined the rally.
"The government is not helping us... the school building where I sheltered is packed with people, with no adequate arrangement for food and medicine," Khan told AFP.
Waseyullah, 33, said his two brothers had worked as labourers in Saudi Arabia for the money with which he had built the small furniture factory he lost in the floods.
"I expect the provincial government to help me financially to rebuild this factory," he added.
More than 3,700 houses have been swept away by the floods in Pakistan and the number of people made homeless is rising, said Hussain, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's information minister.
"Our rescue teams are also trying to extricate some 1,500 tourists who are stranded in the Kalam and Behrain towns of Swat district," he said, referring to a region where the military last year waged a major anti-Taliban offensive.
"We are also getting confirmation of reports about an outbreak of cholera in some areas of Swat," Hussain added.
The army said it had sent boats and helicopters to rescue stranded people and its engineers were trying to open more roads and divert swollen rivers.
In Pakistani Kashmir, officials said army helicopters had been urgently requested in the worst-hit Neelam valley.
"It has been cut off from the rest of Kashmir and we still don't know how many people are killed, injured and displaced there," State Disaster Management Authority chief Farooq Niaz said.
Manuel Bessler, head of the UN's Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance in Pakistan, said communications had broken down in areas across the northwest.
"We have a planning figure of one million people affected directly by the floods," he told the BBC.
However, authorities said they had repaired a damaged portion of the Islamabad-Peshawar motorway to restore the northwest region's road links with the rest of Pakistan.
The flooding capped a week of tragedy for Pakistan after an airliner crashed into hills near Islamabad Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board.

[Master Khan]

Probably the wrose week for us Pashtuns .

[Musafira]

Probably the wrose week for us Pashtuns .

Sadly it will probably get much worse as disease breaks out and more causalities are reported. More rains are expected too


1 August 2010 Last updated at 09:00 ET
Pakistan flood death toll 'passes 1,000'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10832166


Thousands remain trapped and the situation could worsen


The number of people known to have been killed by floods in north-west Pakistan has passed 1,000, officials say.
About 30,000 troops have joined the relief effort, with large parts of the north-west submerged by the worst monsoon rains in memory.
There are also fears that with more rain forecast for the next 24 hours, some areas face further threats.
The main north-south motorway has partially reopened, raising the prospect of aid reaching those trapped.
The BBC's Aleem Maqbool, in the capital Islamabad, says officials fear that once access to affected areas improves, the full picture will show that the situation is much worse than known so far.
A spokesman for the province of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa's disaster management authority said an aerial survey was being conducted to determine the full extent of the flooding.
"It has shown that whole villages have been washed away, animals have drowned and grain storages have been washed away," said the spokesman, Latifur Rehman.
"The destruction is massive."
Bridges down The Pakistani government says 19,000 people in the worst-hit areas had been rescued by soldiers by Saturday night, but that thousands more remained stranded.
More than half of the dead were counted in the districts of Swat and Shangla, according to Mujahid Khan of the private Edhi Foundation.
There have been reports that the flood water is receding in some areas but officials fear that relief operations could be hampered by more rain, with a new monsoon system forecast to arrive in the next 24 hours.
Officials are concerned that more heavy rains could push the flooding south into Sindh province.

Military and rescue workers have been using helicopters to deliver essential supplies to areas that have had transport and communication links cut off.
"Virtually no bridge has been left in Swat. All major and minor bridges have gone, destroyed completely," said army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas.
The army has deployed 43 helicopters and over 100 boats to try to reach people still trapped by the floods, said Mr Rehman.
The Chairman of Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority, Gen Nadim Ahmed, said it would be necessary to rely on helicopters to shift people and drop aid supplies for some time.
He said the UN was responding to a request for help with food, shelter, water and sanitation and medicines.
The US has also provided about 50,000 meals, four rescue boats and two water-filtration units, said US and Pakistani officials.
The American embassy in Islamabad said it would be providing 12 temporary bridges to replace some of those knocked out by the flooding.
As well as the more 1,000 deaths in Pakistan, at least 60 people have died across the border in Afghanistan, where floods have affected four provinces.

[tor_khan]

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