I survived the flood - but I 'll starve.We are the walking dead

Devastation ... the floods affecting Pakistan are the worst in 500 years

 

 

THE Sun joined a military food drop mission over flood-ravaged Pakistan yesterday - and saw thousands of stranded families desperately clinging to life.

While their hero-worshipped cricketers are embroiled in a greedy betting scandal, more than 800,000 starving Pakistanis are marooned.
Some are utterly alone on rooftops surrounded by hundreds of miles of water in what disaster experts now say is the worst flood for 500 YEARS.
Malaria, scabies and diarrhoea are rife, and the confirmed death toll of 1,600 is expected to double in the coming weeks.
In the southern Sindh province most evacuees have been told it will be around two months until they can return home - and with nearly all of Pakistan's fertile agricultural land swamped, at least eight million people need emergency humanitarian aid.

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If you would like to make a donation to Save The Children's Pakistan floods appeal, visit the website savethechildren.org.uk or call 020 7012 6400

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Among those who face being trapped by 20ft waters until the end of October are 72,000 severely malnourished children, who the UN yesterday said are at "high risk of death".
Pakistan Air Force personnel have been switched from fighting the Taliban in the country's dangerous north-western province to aid the relief effort.

Isolated ... people cling to land not submerged by the rising flood waters

Yesterday we helped a PAF helicopter crew to drop high-energy biscuits to just some of the desperate survivors over the southern Shahdadkot region.
Airman Nomman Vink told us: "These people are imprisoned and live in hell. There is water as far as the eye can see and they are trapped on tiny pockets of land.
"But we only have biscuits to give them - which infants cannot digest. They need rice and water but flood waters are diseased. The children are the ones that are starving to death."

Child of the flood ... things look bleak for mum Basra and baby Sajid

A month after unprecedented monsoon floods first smashed across Pakistan, fresh flooding in Sindh over the past few days alone has brought new horror - with dozens crushed in mass stampedes in the rush to escape.
We saw lines of desperate families stretching down main roads for miles in what The Sun can reveal has become the biggest mass evacuation IN HISTORY.
More than 1.3million have joined the exodus in the past four days alone - either fleeing the deadly waters themselves, ordered out by authorities, or rescued by aid workers and the military.
Just yesterday, flood waters broke through defence barriers close to Fakir Goth, near the southern city of Thatta, with 175,000 people fleeing as water cascaded down the streets.
An estimated 17million Pakistanis are now displaced, with the homes of around six million people destroyed.
Many are living in makeshift shelters along the main road that links southern Karachi to capital Islamabad, with the stench of rotting animal corpses, disease and human waste heavy in the air.

Help from above ... Sun woman Virginia in Pakistan Air Force 'copter

Blackened flood water covering an area the size of England has destroyed more than 11,000 villages. Mum Shapana told how she fled her town of Ghouspur with her ten-day-old daughter Bachal in a horse and cart as 8ft flood waters swamped her house.
She said: "I am starving and my baby needs medicine but my home is gone and there is no hope for us.
"I survived the flood but will starve. We are walking dead."
The south of Pakistan, rather than the deluged northern Swat Valley, is the latest danger front, with new floods threatening to swamp vast areas as the surging River Indus balloons from its normal 200-yard width to two miles wide.
And new monsoon rains are expected early this week, which will result in even more destruction and deaths.

Grim ... Shapana and baby daughter Bachal

Scott Hornby

UN spokesman Maurizio Giuliano said more than a million people had been displaced by flooding in Sindh alone in the past three days. He said: "The magnitude of this crisis is reaching levels that are even beyond our initial fears.
"The number of those affected and those in need of assistance from us are bound to keep rising. The floods seem determined to outrun our efforts."
The number of people whose lives have been affected has been estimated at 20million - more than double the populations of London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester put together.
The Sun joined British teams from aid agency Save The Children as they battle to help in the disaster, which the UN has said is worse than the 2004 tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and this year's Haiti earthquake COMBINED.
The charity's Ian Woolverton said: "This is a truly epic disaster requiring a truly epic response. In terms of the numbers of people needing urgent aid, this flood dwarfs other major disasters.
"And we now have two massive disasters on our hands - the problems facing those trapped by flood waters and the millions who have been displaced and are living in refugee camps.
"Just in the Sukkar district of Sindh alone, thousands of evacuees are living in informal camps or along the sides of roads.

Aid drop ... but 8 million people need immediate help

"We're working to deliver our largest ever food distribution - hoping to reach 85,000 families per month. The biggest problems are disease and lack of clean water. "It is a horrific situation."
The Sun visited one of 1,000 informal refugee camps set up in Sukkar district alone - a Save The Children site where 900 flood victims, mostly women and children, are sleeping in the classrooms of a former primary school.
There we met baby boy Sajid - born on July 29, the first day of the tragedy. He was just an hour old when the 7ft flood water smashed into the room where he was being cradled in the arms of his his 29-year-old mother, Basra.
She said: "I shut my eyes and thought I would be swept away and drowned. But a fisherman scooped us up and put us in his boat to take us to safety.
"My little boy is now called Sajid - meaning prayer. He is a flood baby and my only wish is that he will survive."
We also met a few of the hundreds of British Pakistanis who have flown in searching for missing relatives or offering aid themselves.

Obliterated ... village in Sindh province

Birmingham mum of three Samina Kauser said: "Six relatives of mine died in Muzaffarabad in Kashmir. I came to look for others who I can't reach, hoping they are alive. "I am from the same village as Sayeeda Warsi, the Conservative politician. I hope she will use her influence to help."
Abid Sharif, 25, from Blackburn, said he had spent all his savings flying to Gujarat after being "in tears" at news of villages swept away.
He said: "I couldn't stop crying. My best friend's family were washed away. There are 1.2million British Pakistanis in the UK - and I know their hearts have been broken by this