Floods trap thousands in Pakistan

Rescue workers in Pakistan are attempting to reach thousands of people stranded by the worst floods in the country’s history, as the death toll rose to more than 430.

More than a million people had been affected by the floods by Saturday, which have bloated rivers, washed away villages and triggered devastating landslides throughout the northwest of the country.
Vast swathes of farmlands have been destroyed, and entire cities have been cut off after being lashed by the heaviest monsoon rains in living memory.
Pakistani officials warned that more people could be affected as they expected river levels to continue to rise in coming days.
The city of Peshawar has been entirely cut off from the rest of the country, and the Pakistani military has sent boats and helicopters to surrounding areas to rescue stranded villagers.
Meanwhile, army engineers were working around the clock to divert floodwaters away from major roads so that rescue teams could reach stricken areas.  

Rising death toll

Officials warn that the death toll is almost certain to rise, as many areas of the country are inaccessible.
“We have not collected the complete figures from some districts and fear the number of casualties is much higher,” Anwer Kazmi, a spokesman for the Pakistani charity the Edhi Foundation, said.
Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman, reporting from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, said the city experienced “a deluge of water” that came in from Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa [the new name for North West Frontier Province].
“The floods have really affected the infrastructure in and around the province,” he said. “The people in the affected areas were quite critical in the first 24 hours, saying that the authorities were not doing enough. The problem has been getting the help to them.”
A UN situation report into the crisis said that many parts of the affected area have still not been reached. “Search and rescue as well as assessments operations are still patchy and do not cover the whole of the affected area,” it said.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’s information minister said that a lack of suitable equipment was hampering rescue efforts.
“A rescue operation using helicopters cannot be conducted due to the bad weather, while there are only 48 rescue boats available for rescue,” he said.
The floods came after what meteorologists described as an “unprecendented” 12 inches of rain fell in just 36 hours. Experts believe the worst of the rainfall is now over, but the extent of the damage is still being assessed.    
Poor weather this week also may have been a factor in Wednesday’s Airblue plane crash that killed 152 people near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Source: Agencies