TORRENTIAL monsoonal rain across southern Pakistan has killed nearly 200 people and wiped out a million homes, many in villages that were still recovering from last year's devastating nationwide floods.
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The Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, called for international aid for Pakistan and President Asif Ali Zardari asked the United Nations to issue an international appeal for humanitarian assistance.
Shelter, food, water, sanitation, hygiene and health care will be the priorities for displaced families.
Mr Gilani said 2½ times the average monsoon rainfall had fallen across Sindh, in southern Pakistan, flooding about 1.7 million hectares, including almost 700,000 hectares of crops.
Twenty-two out of 23 districts in Sindh have been inundated. Five million people have been affected and nearly a million homes flooded.
Thirty-one children were among the 199 people killed, and more than 450 people have been injured, Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority said.
More than 200,000 people have fled the rising waters for under-resourced relief camps. Last year's floods killed 2000 people and submerged about one-fifth of the country. Twenty million people were affected.
The head of the humanitarian technical unit at Save the Children, Claire Sanford, told the Herald yesterday that while there was less water this year than last, the impact of the recent rains had been magnified because villages, homes and crops were still recovering from last year's inundation.
"The figures we are getting are very similar to those of the government,'' she said. ''Our teams are reporting that villages are four to five feet under water.
"Sindh is a part of Pakistan that doesn't normally get much monsoonal rain. Last year, the province got the back end of the flash flooding from up in the mountains … this year, it has been the monsoonal rains which has caused this flooding."
Children were most at risk, particularly from outbreaks of illness in the camps.
"Children are the most vulnerable in any disaster,'' she said. ''But particularly in this situation - you have children whose nutritional status is depleted from last year's floods, combined with poor hygiene in the camps … an outbreak of diarrhoea is a major concern."
