United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, John Holmes, said more helicopters were urgently required to reach out to isolated flood areas as an estimated 800,000 people in need across the country were only accessible by air.
"These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community", said John Holmes, who visited Pakistan on 15 August together with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
"We need at least 40 additional heavy-lift helicopters, working at full capacity, to reach the huge numbers of increasingly desperate people with life-saving relief", said Marcus Prior of the World Food Programme (WFP). Floodwaters have washed away vital access roads and bridges. This is of particular concern in the Swat Valley of the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, as well as in the mountainous areas of Gilgit Baltistan and Pakistani administered Kashmir, located further east. In parts of the country's central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh, where the Indus River is bursting its banks, several locations have also been surrounded by water and are currently unreachable by road.
"In northern areas that are cut off, markets are short of vital supplies, and prices are rising sharply. People are in need of food staples to survive", said Marcus Prior of WFP, "There is currently no other way to reach these flood victims, other than by helicopter".
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