MUZAFFARGARH, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistanis desperate to get out of flooded villages threw themselves at helicopters yesterday as more heavy rain was expected to intensify both suffering and anger with the government.
President Asif Ali Zardari may have made the biggest political mistake of his career by leaving for visits to Paris and London during the worst floods in 80 years.
The disaster has killed more than 1,600 people and disrupted the lives of 12 million. Pakistan’s agriculture-based economy, heavily dependent on foreign aid, has suffered a major blow.
Heavy rains are expected to lash the country again raising the prospect that more houses and crops will be swept away.
In the town of Muzaffargarh, near where rivers bloated with rain from as far away as Afghanistan and India merge with the Indus to flow south to the sea, army helicopters dropped packets of rice to people who had moved to higher ground to a cemetery.
Some latched on to helicopter skids as the aircraft took off. An elderly man fought his way inside one. He looked down and wept.
“Things are getting worse. It’s raining again. That’s hampering our relief work,” said UN World Food Programme spokesman Amjad Jamal.
Some Pakistanis said leaving home would only bring more uncertainty.
“Where should I go? Who will take care of me and my family? I’m fine in my village,” said Dur Mohammad, 70, sitting beside his rice field, inundated with rain, in Sindh province.
Districts in southern Sindh were on high alert as the water surged down the Indus river basin.
After a dike burst in one Sindh village, authorities ordered people to leave and soldiers started evacuations, said a district official. Authorities said up to a million people in the province have been evacuated.
Floods have roared down from the north to the agricultural heartland of Punjab to Sindh along a trail more than 1,000 km (620 miles) long.
Sindh is home to Pakistan’s biggest city and commercial hub, Karachi, but the floods are expected to hit rural areas.
UN officials said more than half a million people had been evacuated in Sindh.
Flooding was also taking a toll over the border in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, where rain was hampering rescue and relief efforts. Flash floods have killed at least 132 people in the Himalayan region of Ladakh.
