প্রকাশ: 07/09/2022
Parts of Pakistan
seemed "like a sea", Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday,
after visiting some of the flood-hit areas that cover as much as a third of the
South Asian nation, where 18 more deaths took the toll from days of rain to 1,343.
As many as 33 million of a population of 220 million have
been affected in a disaster blamed on climate change that has left hundreds of
thousands homeless and caused losses of at least $10 billion, officials
estimate.
"You wouldn't believe the scale of destruction
there," Sharif told media after a visit to the southern province of Sindh.
"It is water everywhere as far as you could see. It is just like a
sea."
The government, which has boosted cash handouts for flood
victims to 70 billion Pakistani rupees ($313.90 million), will buy 200,000
tents to house displaced families, he added.
Receding waters threaten a new challenge in the form of
water-born infectious diseases, Sharif said.
"We will need trillions of rupees to cope with this
calamity."
The United Nations has called for $160 million in aid to
help the flood victims.
Many of those affected are from Sindh, where Pakistan's
largest freshwater lake is dangerously close to bursting its banks, even after
having been breached in an operation that displaced 100,000 people.
National disaster officials said eight children were among
the dead in the last 24 hours. The floods were brought by record monsoon rains
and glacier melt in Pakistan's northern mountains.
With more rain expected in the coming month, the situation
could worsen further, a top official of the United Nations' refugee agency
(UNHCR) has warned.
Already, the World Health Organization has said more than
6.4 million people need humanitarian support in the flooded areas.
The raging waters have swept away 1.6 million houses, 5,735
km (3,564 miles) of transport links, 750,000 head of livestock, and swamped
more than 2 million acres (809,370 hectares) of farmland.
Pakistan has received nearly 190% more rain than the 30-year
average in July and August, totalling 391 mm (15.4 inches), with Sindh getting
466% more rain than the average.
- Reuters
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