PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 2, (Agencies): Fears were growing Monday for up to 2.5 million people affected by Pakistan’s worst floods in 80 years amid outbreaks of disease after monsoon rains killed up to 1,500 people.
Unprecedented rains triggered floods and landslides, sweeping away thousands of homes and devastating farmland in one of Pakistan’s most impoverished regions, already hard hit by years of Taleban and al-Qaeda-linked violence.
Pakistani officials warn that a lack of drinking water is spreading disease, including cholera, and say they are working to medivac people from affected areas such as Swat, the scene last year of an offensive against the Taleban.
The International Committee of the Red Cross announced that up to 2.5 million people across Pakistan have been affected by the heavy flooding.

“In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water,” it said in a statement, noting that thousands of people “have lost everything.”
Aid workers and Pakistan’s military conducted what relief efforts they could as officials warned that the death toll was rising.
“There are 774 deaths registered with us, but the total number killed in the flood is 1,200 to 1,500,” Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of northwest province Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told a news conference in Peshawar.
Syed Zahir Ali Shah, health minister for the province, said about 100,000 people, mostly children, were suffering from illness such as gastroenteritis.
A spokesman for the charity World Vision said teams had visited those affected around the main northwestern city of Peshawar, but that those further north had been inaccessible by road.

“They don’t have drinking water or food. They said there have been some visible signs of water-borne diseases,” Muhammad Ali told AFP, warning that the death toll was likely to rise further as aid workers reached more areas.
At a camp set up by the army for around 640 families in Nowshehra, women and children ran after vehicles bringing food and water, pushing and shouting.
“We are getting patients with trauma, gastroenteritis, skin diseases and dehydration,” doctor Shoaib Mohammad told AFP at a small 20-bed mobile clinic.
Fifty-year-old Ajmair Shah went into shock after flood destroyed his home in Nowshehra. He lay motionless in his hospital bed and staring into the air.
“My house was swept away by the flood, nothing is left there. I have lost everything,” Shah said and started weeping.

People at the camp said there were no proper latrines or bathrooms and that the only respite from the crushing heat was plastic hand fans. Most of them fled in the clothes they were wearing and many children roamed around naked.
“They throw food at us as if we are animals and not humans,” Ilyas Khan, one angry man told AFP, complaining there was no proper system of distribution.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon pledged aid of up to 10 million dollars for those affected by the crisis, saying he was “deeply saddened” by the floods.
The US government announced a 10-million-dollar aid pledge and has rushed helicopters and boats to Pakistan. China has also promised 1.5 million dollars, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Anwer Kazmi, a spokesman for Pakistan’s largest charity, the Edhi Foundation, said at least 1,256 people had been killed.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister Amir Haider Hoti said the floods were “unprecedented” and warned it could take up to 10 days to assess the overall number of dead and displaced.
Pakistan’s meteorological service forecast rains of up to 200 millimetres (eight inches) in the next weeks across the northwest, Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the central province of Punjab and Sindh in the south.
Flood victims have condemned authorities over a sluggish relief, shouting “give us aid sent by foreign countries” and “death to the corrupt government.”
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said it had rescued more than 28,000 people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by helicopter and boat.
The NDMA said nearly 30,000 homes had been damaged across the country.
In addition to those killed in the northwest, local officials said 53 people died in Pakistani Kashmir, 26 in southwestern province Baluchistan and 49 in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.
The southern province of Sindh went on red alert, spokesman Mazhar Siddiqui said, fearing that 150,000 people could be displaced by expected floods there.

Delegation
Secretary-General of the Kuwait Joint Relief Committee Faisal Al-Jeeran said on Monday that a delegation from the Committee will travel next Thursday to Pakistan for the distribution of relief assistance and basic needs for victims and displaced persons as a result of floods that swept northwestern Pakistan.
Al-Jeeran told KUNA that the Committee at its meeting, headed by Ahmed Saad Al-Jasser, acting Chairman of the Committee, decided to send a delegation to Pakistan for the distribution of relief supplies to flood-stricken people through coordination with the charge d’affaires at the Embassy of the State of Kuwait to Islamabad, Falah Al-Mutairi in order to facilitate the task of the delegation.
He explained that the Committee has sent 100,000 Kuwaiti dinars (nearly $330,000) as an initial assistance to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deliver it to the affected population there.
He appealed to charities and philanthropists and benefactors in Kuwait to move quickly to aid flood victims in in north-west Pakistan, which killed and displaced more than 1,100 people, according to the latest official sources in Pakistan.

Britain pledged five million pounds (six million euros, eight million dollars) Monday to help the victims of flooding in Pakistan.
The cash, which will be channelled through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), will be spent on efforts to help provide safe drinking water, toilets, sewage clearance and other measures.
It was announced by the Department for International Development, which said that Britain had already given another five million pounds to an emergency response fund for Pakistan in April.
“I know many British people are deeply concerned by the terrible suffering caused by the ongoing monsoon floods in Pakistan,” International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said.

Stench
The stench of death hung over flooded Pakistani communities Monday as furious survivors mourned the dead and assailed the government for abandoning them during the worst floods in living memory.
Sitting at a relief camp set up by a local businessman in Khandar village outside the northwestern town of Nowshehra, Bushra Begum cradled her youngest son in her lap. “He is one year old and ill,” she said softly.
She has not seen her other two children since monsoon rain water submerged their house last week.
“The water started entering our house late on Thursday night and by 6.00am it was all under water and we climbed on the roof to save ourselves.
“My two children went missing in the flooding and so far there is no trace of them,” she told AFP.
Women and children stumbled towards Doctor Khalid Khan at the makeshift camp, with problems including skin disease, acute diarrhoea and fever.
Their men took refuge in mosques and stood cursing the government in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

“God destroy this government. They have not helped us during this disaster,” shouted Mohammad Shah Fahad as he stood on a roadside.
An AFP reporter travelling through Nowshehra witnessed scenes of massive destruction. Flood waters had washed away part of the highway, private tractors were removing mud to make way for traffic.
Petrol pumps, homes, shops and markets were under water. The stink of rotting animal carcasses was everywhere.
“It was so sad. The bodies of two young boys floated in the water outside the village. People took them out and buried them after offering funeral prayers,” said Iqbal Ahmed in Khandar.
With the rains now over, local merchants installed generators to pump water out of ruined shops and businesses. Other residents used buckets to try to empty the water from their homes in Nowshehra town.

An AFP reporter saw dozens of people gathered around a hand-pump in an effort to get drinking water.
Nizam Gul, another resident, said diarrohea was widespread especially among children, but there was no medicine available.
“The relief camps set up by authorities are just showpieces, there is no food or medicine available there,” Gul said as a municipal truck carried away the swollen corpse of a dead horse.
“When the flood came, nobody came to our rescue. We spent two nights on the roof in the rain without food and water,” Mohammad Tariq, a cloth merchant told AFP, adding millions of rupees (tens of thousands of dollars) of goods had been destroyed.
Farzana Bibi, a 35-year-old woman from Badrashi village was begging for food and water after her house and livestock were swept away.