SUKKUR, Pakistan, (Reuters) – The United Nations appealed yesterday for $459 million in aid for flood-hit Pakistan, warning of a second wave of death among sick, hungry survivors unless help arrived quickly.
Roiling floods triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain have scoured Pakistan’s Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing 2 million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.
President Asif Ali Zardari, whose government has come in for harsh criticism for its perceived sluggish response to the disaster, defended a decision to travel abroad as the floods began, saying he helped focus international attention on the plight of the victims.
The floods, the worst in the region in 80 years, have raised fears for the prospects of the nuclear-armed U.S. ally already battling a deadly Islamist militancy.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday the U.S. military was tripling the number of helicopters in Pakistan to 19 from six and sending in a landing platform to be used off the coast of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city.
Washington, which had already committed $55 million to Pakistani flood relief efforts, also announced it was contributing a further $16.2 million to the U.N. refugee agency and International Red Cross for emergency assistance to flood victims.
