Fresh rains hamper relief efforts

Fresh rains lashed flood-hit Pakistan Sunday, hampering aid efforts and threatening to deepen a crisis affecting 15 million people in the country's worst ever floods. Helicopters were grounded in the north-west while rescuers rushed to evacuate families in the poor southern farming belt of Sindh, where officials were on red alert for a deluge that could burst the banks of the swollen Indus River.
New downpours hammered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sunday, with experts predicting more rain to come, adding to the misery of the millions made homeless by the destructive floods. "The situation is bad, particularly in the Swat valley, and we have advised people in low-lying areas to vacate their homes as river water levels are rising," said Adnan Ahmed, a provincial official.
At least 11 people were killed and 31 injured when a truck carrying flood evacuees fell into a ditch on Saturday after skidding off a slippery road in the Lower Dir, police officer Mumtaz Zareen said.
With the floods sweeping south, those uprooted from their homes in Sindh province have been moved to government buildings, schools and tents. The Indus river was at very high flood levels and water breached a canal in Tori Band village, forcing people to flee with their families on donkey and camel carts with whatever possessions they could grab.
"We have taken only some of our belongings, most of our household was left behind. We have nothing with us," Abdul Hakim, 30, a farmer leaving Tori Band, told AFP.
"Everything was under water, my field and my house, I have to start a new life," said Hakim, transporting his wife and five young children in a bullock cart. Thousands of villagers were being evacuated from remote districts of north-west Sindh, with helicopters seen flying overhead. "A breach has taken place in a canal. Several villages are under water, we are shifting people to safer places, there is no report of human loss," Sualeh Farooqui, chief of Sindh disaster management authority, told AFP.
School teacher Ali Ahmad, 40, had already moved his family to safety and was riding his motorcycle after flood waters hit his house. "We were here to take care of our household but now it is impossible. We cannot put our lives in danger," Ahmad said.
Countries including Britain, China, Australia, France and the United States have pledged tens of millions of dollars in aid for victims of the nearly two-week-old disaster. The United Nations estimates at least 1,600 people have been killed by the floods that have ravaged the largely impoverished, insurgency-hit country, sweeping away entire villages.
The flooding has threatened electricity generation plants, forcing units to shut down in a country already suffering a crippling energy crisis. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, head of flood relief operations Major General Ghayoor Mehmood said some 1,400 people have been killed, with 213 still missing. Flooding has spread to Indian-held Kashmir, where more than 130 people have died, while some parts of the Punjab are under six feet (two metres) of water, affecting nearly two million people, a senior crisis management official said.
More than 252,000 homes are thought to have been damaged or destroyed across Pakistan and 1.38 million acres (558,000 hectares) of farmland flooded, and it could be weeks before electricity is fully restored. Survivors have lashed out at authorities for failing to come to their rescue and provide better relief, piling pressure on a cash-strapped administration straining to contain Taliban violence and an economic crisis.
Particular scorn has been heaped on the President Asif Ali Zardari for pressing ahead with a visit to Europe at the height of the disaster. In war-torn neighbouring Afghanistan, there were reports of flooding in the south central province of Wardak, where 12 people were confirmed dead, and in eastern Nuristan province, said Abdul Mateen Idrak, head of the National Disaster Management Authority.
The death toll in from floods in Pakistani administered Kashmir has risen to 63, crisis management official Mahmood Khan said, adding that 1,000 families had been displaced.