Karachi, Aug 05: At least one million people in southern Pakistan have been left marooned, homeless and facing disease or snakebites as a result of floods caused by the worst monsoon rains in a decade, officials said. The death toll from 24 days of flooding in Sindh province hit 153 over the weekend. Nine more died in the past two days of heavy rains in North West Frontier Province bringing the countrywide toll to 162.
More than half a million houses have been damaged or washed away in an area more than 1,000 square kilometers (400 square miles) in size.
"The death toll may rise as we are expecting (to find) more bodies as water recedes," Sindh provincial government Additional Relief Commissioner Ali Nawaz Mallah said yesterday.
Relief worker Rizwan Edhi of the private charity Edhi Welfare Trust said the final toll could reach 300.
Mallah said a survey of rain-hit areas was being conducted.
"The survey has started to assess the losses and the people hit by rains and floods and the figure will exceed a million," he told.
Rains which have fallen almost continuously since July 8, let up since the weekend but are forecast to return later in the week.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and are threatened with disease, the United Nations children's agency Unicef warned. Bureau Report