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Al-Arabiya

KARACHI/THATTA (Agencies)

Flood waters threatened to engulf two towns in southern Pakistan on Saturday, a month after the disaster began, as the United Nations warned that tens of thousands of children risked death from malnutrition.

The floods are Pakistan's worst-ever natural disaster in terms of the amount of damage and the number of people affected, with more than six million people forced from their homes, about a million of them in the last few days as the water flows south.

The disaster has killed about 1,600 people, inflicted billions of dollars of damage to homes, infrastructure and the vital agriculture sector and stirred anger against the U.S.-backed government which has struggled to cope.

" The water has not reached the town up to now but it is approaching "
Ahmed Soomro, relief commissioner Floodwaters are beginning to recede across most of the country as the water flows downstream, but high tides in the Arabian Sea meant they still posed a threat to towns in Sindh province such as Thatta, 70 km (45 miles) east of Karachi.

Water had broken the banks of the Indus near Thatta and also broken out of a feeder canal running off the river, compounding the danger, Riaz Ahmed Soomro, relief commissioner in the southern province of Sindh, told Reuters.

"The water has not reached the town up to now but it is approaching," Soomro said.

Tens of thousands of people have poured out of the delta town, which normally has a population of about 300,000, after authorities told people to leave.

The floods began in late July after torrential monsoon downpours over the upper Indus basin.

The death toll was expected to rise significantly as more bodies of many missing people were found, the disaster management authority said.

Even before the floods, Pakistan's economy was fragile. Growth, forecast at 4.5 percent this fiscal year, is now predicted at anything between zero and 3 percent.

The floods have damaged at least 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) -- about 14 percent of Pakistan's entire cultivated land -- according to the United Nation's food agency.

The total cost in crop damages is believed to be about 245 billion rupees ($2.86 billion.)


Deadly synergy

Authorities have been battling for days to save the town of Shahdadkot in northern Sindh's rice-growing belt, raising an embankment several kilometres long as the water has crept higher.

The flood barrier was still holding, Soomro said.

The United Nations said aid workers were becoming increasingly worried about disease and hunger, especially among children in areas where even before the disaster, acute malnutrition was high.

"We fear the deadly synergy of waterborne diseases, including diarrhoea, dehydration and malnutrition," senior UNICEF official Karen Allen said in a statement.

U.N. humanitarian coordinator Martin Mogwanja said the international response to the disaster must be more assertive.

"If nothing is done, an estimated 72,000 children, currently affected by severe malnutrition in the flood-affected areas, are at high risk of death," he said.

The floods are another huge problem for a government which came to power after the 2008 election, restoring civilian rule after nearly a decade.

As well as grappling with economic problems, the government has been struggling to stop Islamist militant violence.

Early on Saturday, militants being questioned at a security agency building in the northwestern city of Peshawar overpowered two guards and took them hostage, a military spokesman said.

Peshawar, the main city in the northwest where there have been numerous militant attacks, has not been flooded but flash floods caused extensive damage in parts of the northwest.

In the United States, an ally which regards Pakistan as a front-line state in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, concern has been growing that Islamist charities linked to militants have increased their involvement in flood-relief efforts, possibly exploiting anger to gain recruits.


Southern Sindh the worst-affected province

" More than seven million people have been displaced in Sindh since August 3, one million only in the past two days "
Ghulam Ali Pasha, provincial relief commissionerFor nearly a month torrential monsoon rains have triggered massive floods, moving steadily from north to south in Pakistan, affecting a fifth of the volatile country and 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province. Out of its 23 districts, 19 have so far been ravaged by floods, a statement by the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday.

"More than seven million people have been displaced in Sindh since August 3, one million only in the past two days," provincial relief commissioner Ghulam Ali Pasha said.

"The magnitude of this catastrophe is so huge that the government cannot cope with it alone. We are trying to grapple it, but we need international support," he said.

Pasha said 2.3 million people were still in need of tents and food.

"We are fighting to save Thatta and other towns," in Sindh, he added.

Other officials said floods were moving swiftly towards Thatta district and had begun submerging the district's outskirts.

"Two more breaches have taken place around Thatta. We are trying to save the city, (but) Belo has been submerged in water," Hadi Bakhsh Kalhoro, a senior administrative official, told AFP.

Belo, on the outskirts of Thatta, has a population of around 10,2D0 people.

Thatta was deserted as people fled with their livestock and other belongings, heading for nearby Makli and Karachi as engineers tried to repair six-meter (20-foot) wide breach a nearby dyke, an AFP reporter said.

"The flood situation in southern Sindh continues to deteriorate, large-scale population movements have been reported following the breach of an embankment in Thatta district," an OCHA statement issued late Friday said.

"The Indus River is raging at 40 times its normal volume, with the largest sea surge of water now in the Thatta district," it said.

Sindh irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo said they were making all possible efforts to save Thatta district.

"Today is very important for Thatta, we are using all our resources to stop the water flow towards Thatta. We are making gigantic efforts," he told AFP.

Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah warned the city would be in danger until the breach was repaired.

"We are hopeful that we will successfully plug the breach in two to three days, but the danger to Thatta remains," he told reporters Saturday.

Pakistan is planning to soon host an international donors' conference to help the flood victims, foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP Saturday.

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