Survivors angry after floods kill 1,100

PAKISTAN: Survivors crammed into inadequate shelters expressed anger over inaction from the Pakistani government on Monday as the death toll from the country’s worst floods in generations topped 1,100.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon pledged extra aid of up to 10 million dollars to help in the crisis, which local officials say has affected more than 1.5 million people in Pakistan’s northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“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 labourer Ejaz Khan, one of several hundred people who demonstrated in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains capped a devastating week in Pakistan, where 152 people were killed when an Airblue passenger jet slammed into hills overlooking the capital in the country’s worst plane crash.

Ban said he was “deeply saddened” by the losses incurred in the worst floods in Pakistan for 80 years, reiterating a full commitment to “meeting the humanitarian needs” of those affected.

Pakistani television footage and photographs taken from helicopters showed people clinging to the walls and rooftops of damaged houses as water rushed through villages, with waterborne diseases emerging as a threat to survivors.

Thousands of homes and vast swathes of farmland have been destroyed in a region of Pakistan reeling from years of extremist bloodshed.

“The floods have killed more than 1,100 people in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and affected over 1.5 million,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the northwest province’s information minister.

“We are receiving information about the loss of life and property caused by the floods all over the province,” he told AFP, adding that he feared the death toll could rise.

Peshawar, Monday, AFP