141 killed, four million homeless as floods hit southern Pakistan
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Xinhua, September 11, 2011
At least 141 people have died and four million people have become homeless in the recent rains and floods that have hit the southern part of Pakistan since August, reported local TV channel Express on Sunday.
The report quoted the Pakistan's prime minister as saying in a late Saturday night televised address that the scale of destruction caused by the rains in the country's southern Sindh province was much higher than the initial estimates.
The prime minister required international cooperation for actual assessment of the losses and called for the international community 's support for the flood-affected people in the country.
This is the second call made by the Pakistani top leadership for international help for its flood-affected people following a similar call made by the country's president Asif Ali Zardari a couple of days ago.
Gilani said that the recent rains in Sindh were 142 percent above normal in the area, which first hit its southern part and later expanded to the other parts of the province.
According to the prime minister, a total of 21 districts have been affected by the recent rains and floods, which inundated 4.1 million acre of land and severely damaged standing crops on more than 1.7 million acres of agriculture land.
He said that a total of 4,000 medical camps have so far been set up, where 150,000 out of the four million flood-affected people have been accommodated there.
The government has arranged 100,000 additional tents from the local tent manufactures during the next three weeks while arrangements are being made to distribute 100,000 family ration bags among the affected families on a daily basis, said the prime minister.
He said that unprecedented rain spells is caused by climatic changes and will make the situation worse.
He called the world institutions and the international community to give immediate attention to the rain-affected people in his country.
"We believe that the international institutions and the world community by giving serious consideration to the President's appeal will take immediate steps on human grounds and speed up their efforts for the rehabilitation of affected people," he said.
