Flood-hit Pakistanis Carve for Help

"The situation in flood-affected areas has assumed alarming proportions," Dr. Tabassum Jafri, Secretary of Al-Khidmat Foundation, told IslamOnline.net.

"There is an acute shortage of food and drinking water in the affected areas, where marooned people have taken shelter in mosques, schools, colleges, and even across the main highways, which are less-affected," he noted.

"And if the ongoing relief operation is not accelerated in the affected areas, especially in the remote localities, a human tragedy may occur."

Al-Khidmat Foundation, along with various other organizations, has been carrying out relief efforts in the rains and flood-hit areas, where a total of 3.5 million people have been affected.

Floodwater coming from Balochistan spilled into various bordering districts of Sindh province, inundating around 800 villages and displacing over 200,000 people.

The worst affected district is Qambar-Shahdadkot, the constituency of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, where 400 villages have been submerged and over 100,000 people displaced.

The government has declared various severely affected areas calamity-hit, and the army has been called out to carry out the relief operation.

All five badly-affected districts of Balochistan, Gawadar, Turbat, Jiwani, Ormara, and Pasni have been without electricity for the last 12 days.

Appeals

Thousands of people have been displacd by the floods and rains. (IOL photo)

Qubo Saeed Khan, a small town of the Qambar-Shahdadkot, is the epicenter of floodwater.

More