Pakistan battles new floods as monsoon rains swamp Sindh province

Death toll of 200 set to rise as aid groups scramble to help 5 million victims affected by weeks of rain and government delay Still reeling from last year’s epic floods, Pakistan is battling monsoon rains that have affected 5 million people and killed 200, a toll that is likely to rise with fresh downpours forecast for the coming days. Torrential rains over the past five weeks have inundated southern Sindh province, which was devastated by last year’s floods, triggering an urgent if tardy humanitarian response. After waiting weeks for a green light from the Pakistani government, aid agencies are scrambling to distribute emergency aid to villagers trapped by rising waters that have swamped towns, destroyed homes and destroyed farmland. “The situation is clearly critical and deteriorating for many who have seen their entire livelihoods washed away,” said Dominique Frankefort, acting country director of the World Food Programme. At least 1m homes have been destroyed or damaged and 4.2m acres (17,000 sq km) of land flooded since late August, according to the UN. Oxfam is helping 100,000 people through local groups and the WFP expects to distribute food to 500,000 people. But the true scale of the crisis will only become clear after a hastily organised emergency assessment over the coming days. The floods are smaller than last year’s calamity that affected 20 million Pakistanis, left 2,000 dead and inundated one-fifth of the country. Nevertheless, they have devastated communities in some of the most poverty-stricken districts. They present a fresh challenge to the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, already struggling to manage the country’s perilous shaky finances, militant violence and political upheaval. One of the worst-hit areas centres on Zardari’s hometown, Nawabshah, where just over half of the nearby district’s 1.7 million inhabitants have been affected, according to the national disaster management authority. Since 57cm (22in) of rain fell in the district over one week at least 50,000 people have taken shelter in camps, mostly in schools, said NDMA official Idrees Mahsud, speaking from Nawabshah. More than 300,000 houses collapsed, often as a result of stagnant waters eroding mud walls, he said. Victims had been electrocuted, drowned, hit by lightning, and, in the case of one infant, crushed by a wall. The main danger now is disease bred by stagnant water and the rotting corpses of drowned farm animals. “Our main concern is to contain the spread of disease – acute respiratory disease, diarrhoea, dysentery, malaria,” he said. While last year’s floods were caused by an engorged Indus river bursting its banks across the country, this year’s calamity has been caused by a combination of monsoon rains and breaches to a series of canals on the left-bank of the river. This year’s crisis is concentrated in Sindh but has also affected pockets of Balochistan and Kohistan district in the mountainous north-west. It has been bubbling since early August but the government, keen to show that it had the crisis in hand, delayed declaring an official emergency last Thursday, slowing the response of the international aid community. “There was a lot of frustration. We knew the government would only give permission at the 11th hour,” said a senior official with a British aid agency, who declined to be named. Now there is “clarity”, aid agencies are hoping to use the lessons of last year to move quickly, said Jack Byrne of the Pakistan Humanitarian Forum, which represents 43 international non-governmental organisations. The situation in Sindh is already serious and there will be more flooding and more problems because of these rains,” Arif Mehmood, a meteorology official, is quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency. Pakistan Natural disasters and extreme weather Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk

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