Pakistan Floods Affect 12 Million
August 6th, 2010Via: Al Jazeera:
About 12 million people have now been affected by Pakistan’s worst floods in 80 years, disaster officials have said, raising previous estimates by three times.
Nadeem Ahmed, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority, said that the figure only applied to the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and central Punjab provinces, with figures from the southern Sindh province not yet available.
Previous estimates had said that four million Pakistanis have been affected, a reflection of the rapidly growing scale of the disaster.
The new figures come as Pakistan braces for yet more rains in areas already badly hit by torrential monsoon downpours that have caused devastation, washing away villages and destroying swathes of agricultural land.
“We’re forecasting widespread rains in the country, especially in flood-affected areas,” Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director general of Pakistan’s meteorological department, said.
More than 1600 people been killed by the floods, which started last week when torrential monsoon downpours hit the north-west of the country. Swollen rivers are now flowing south, raising fears that further destruction lies ahead.
