KUWAIT CITY, Aug 9, (Agencies): The Cabinet on Monday extended condolences to Pakistan on death of many Pakistanis as a result of deadly floods that swept across vast regions. The Kuwaiti Government, at the weekly session, held at Seif Palace, under chairmanship of Acting Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah, expressed condolences to the friendly Republic of Pakistan and the families of the victims. Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Roudhan Abdel Aziz Al-Roudhan, reading a statement after the session, said the executives shared the Pakistani people their sentiments toward this painful catastrophe that resulted in the destruction of whole villages and death and injury of many people in addition to inflicting massive damage.

The ministers were informed about the order of His Highness the Amir, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, of dispatching five million dollars worth of urgent aid to the friendly Pakistan to help the nation cope with the recent floods, as well as assigning the Kuwait Red Crescent Society with securing the required aid as soon as possible, in coordination with the Ministry of Interior.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said Monday that massive floods in Pakistan had affected 13.8 million people and eclipsed the scale of the devastating 2004 tsunami, as anger mounted among survivors.
The Pakistani government and UN officials have appealed for more urgent relief efforts to cope with the country’s worst ever floods, with President Asif Ali Zardari due to return home after a heavily criticised European tour.
The entire northwestern Swat valley, where Pakistan fought a major campaign to flush out Taleban insurgents last year, was cut off at the weekend as were parts of the country’s breadbasket in Punjab and Sindh.
“This disaster is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake,” Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AFP.

He said the 13.8 million affected outstripped the more than three million hit by the 2005 earthquake, five million in the 2004 tsunami and the three million affected by the Haiti earthquake in January this year.
The United Nations estimates 1,600 people have died in Pakistan’s floods and the Pakistani government has confirmed 1,243 deaths. About 220,000 were killed by the Dec 26, 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.
Martin Mogwanja, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, called on relief operations “to be massively scaled up”.
“This is the worst ever flood of our history. The nation needs to come together at this crucial time,” said Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani after visiting flood-hit areas of Punjab province on Monday.
“Rehabilitation of the affected people is a challenge. We are facing a bigger challenge than 2005 earthquake. It is a catastrophe,” he said.
The government said foreign donors including the United States have pledged $92.8 million in aid but, on the ground, Islamic charities with suspected extremist links have been far more visible in the relief effort.

Pakistan’s meteorological office forecast only scattered rain in the next 24 hours and said the intensity of monsoon showers was lessening.
But with floods sweeping south, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to seek safety as heavy rains continued to lash the province of Sindh and water levels rose further in the swollen Indus river.
“We have evacuated about one million people but hundreds of thousands of people left their houses alone,” Jam Saifullah Dharejo, irrigation minister for Sindh, told AFP.
Hundreds of farm workers were stranded on a bridge in the highway town of Karampur in northern Sindh, camped out with utensils and bedding while the road beyond lay flooded and the main Indus highway blocked, an AFP reporter said.

“We fled to save our lives. We thought we would get relief goods but we got nothing,” said Dodo Khan, 50, an agriculture worker.
“We haven’t eaten for three days. My younger son, who is just five years old, is crying with hunger.”
Gnawing on a piece of onion, the child winces at the bitter taste, crying and visibly unable to swallow.
Survivors have for weeks lashed out at authorities for failing to come to their rescue, piling pressure on Pakistan’s cash-strapped administration straining to contain Taleban violence and an economic crisis.
Thin and frail, Mahi Bacchi, 45, cried: “We voted for this government. We made Asif Ali Zardari our ruler but we don’t know why he is so unconcerned.
“We are here without food and water. Our children are sick but no one comes from the government to help us.
“Please send vehicle and take us out. We are in grave danger. There is water on one side and hunger on the other,” she said.
Zardari has spent August in France and Britain, courting massive criticism from the political opposition and intelligentsia for not returning at a time of national disaster. One protester threw a shoe at him in England.

The United Nations estimated that up to 500,000 people are homeless and 1.4 million acres of agricultural land destroyed in central Punjab province, but said damage was worst in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The OCHA spokesman Giuliano said that even donkeys were being used to access parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa inaccessible by other means and warned that the risk of water-borne diseases persisted.
Authorities in the Punjab district of Muzaffargarh issued a red alert and ordered people to evacuate as water entered the city from breaches in canals.
An overloaded army boat evacuating people in the Punjab town of Jampur capsized Sunday and 30 people are missing, said a local official.
At least 14 people, including three children, were killed as flash floods destroyed homes in the the northwestern Hangu district. In the lawless Khyber district on the Afghan border, 150 houses were destroyed in floods.

Landslides
Soldiers and aid workers struggled on Monday to reach at least a million people cut off by landslides that have complicated relief efforts after the worst floods in Pakistan in 80 years.
Poor weather has grounded relief helicopters and more rain was expected to compound the misery of more than 13 million people — about 8 percent of the population — whose lives have been disrupted by the floods, including two million homeless.
The floods have killed more than 1,600 people.
In the Swat Valley, northwest of Islamabad, soldiers and aid workers are using mules or travelling on foot to reach people in desperate need of help.
The catastrophe has put unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari on the defensive while raising the profile of the military which is spearheading relief efforts.

The floods, which began 10 days ago after heavy monsoon rain over the upper reaches of the Indus river basin, have ploughed a swathe of destruction more than 1,000 kms (600 miles) long from northern Pakistan to the southern province of Sindh.
While the water has begun to recede in some parts of the north, water-logged mountainsides long stripped of forest cover have begun to slide in some areas, isolating communities.
“We have brought in 130 mules to take food supplies to the cut-off valleys,” an army spokesman in Swat, Major Mushtaq Khan, told Reuters, adding that bad weather had grounded helicopters for the past two days.
“About one million people are stranded because the main road link has been severed ... We believe that most stocks villagers had, have been exhausted and they need supplies.”

Birth
A Pakistani woman stranded by the country’s worst floods in 80 years gave birth to twin boys on Monday, bringing joy to soldiers and villagers struggling amidst death and destruction.
The floods have killed 1,600 people and affected more than 13 million.
Army helicopter pilot Captain Abdul Munim Khan thought he was picking up another dead victim of the deluge when he landed in a flooded village and men bearing a body on a rope bed, covered by a sheet, moved towards him through chest-deep water.
“But when they came close, I realised that she was alive. To my pleasant surprise, there were also the twin boys,” Khan told Reuters after the rescue.
The young mother, Zahida Perveen, who gave birth in the open, was taken to hospital with her boys.
“I was so happy, I was weeping when I saw they were boys,” Perveen said from her hospital bed.
Mother and children were doing fine, hospital officials said.