At least 1,100 people have died and thousands have lost everything.
"In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water," the Red Cross said in a statement.
There are fears diarrhoea and cholera will spread among the homeless. Food is scarce and water supplies have been contaminated by the floods.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the Information Minister of Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (formerly North West Frontier Province), one of the worst-hit regions, said rescue teams were trying to reach 27,000 stranded people, including 1,500 tourists in the Swat Valley, the scene of a major military offensive against the Taliban last year.
"We are also getting confirmation of reports about an outbreak of cholera in some areas of Swat," he added.
The Pakistani military says it has committed 30,000 troops and dozens of helicopters to the relief effort, but winching individuals to safety is a slow process.
The army - which says it has rescued 28,000 people in recent days - predicts the initial search and rescue operation will take up to 10 days, says the BBC's Orla Guerin, who has been on board a military helicopter over the Swat Valley.
But the army says rebuilding the damaged areas could take six months or more.
A spokesman for the UK-based charity Save the Children told the BBC that the infrastructure damage in Swat may be worse than in the earthquake which devastated the region in 2005.
As well as the more 1,000 deaths in Pakistan, at least 60 people have died across the border in Afghanistan, where floods have affected four provinces.
Source; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10834414
"The government is not helping us"
ReplyDelete"The school building where I sheltered is packed with people, with no adequate arrangement for food and medicine"
"All the wells which are providing water for them are full of mud"
This is all a sheer outcry from the hundreds of suffering communities from Pakistan. Help is needed from all sides but who will provide? Who will take the extra step?