By Farhan Sharif
Aug. 26 (
Bloomberg) -- Pakistan ordered the immediate evacuation of up to 600,000 people from towns and villages along southern reaches of the Indus River as unprecedented monthlong floods swept toward the sea.
“We are sitting on the roof of our office now, waiting for vehicles to help evacuate us,” Sajad Ali Shah, a local government official, said by telephone from Shahdadkot, a city of 400,000 people in northern Sindh province, as water entered streets. “We need boats to pull out people stuck in areas where vehicles can no longer enter.” Public announcements urging people to leave were blaring from mosques, he said.
About 17.2 million people have lost homes and livelihoods to inundations that have killed 1,542 people, the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. Donors have given 60 percent of $460 million needed to fund the emergency response, it said. While water levels have stopped rising or receded in places, as many as 800,000 victims are stranded in areas that can only be reached by air.
Around 340 kilometers (212 miles) to the south of Shahdadkot, floodwaters triggered an emptying of threatened low- lying areas close to the Indus delta.
“We need to evacuate around 200,000 people in the next four to six hours to safer areas,” Mirza Afzal, a Sindh Provincial Disaster Management Authority official, said by phone from the district of Thatta, 100 kilometers east of Karachi, the country’s biggest city. ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaRtqunqyxD0&pos=8
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