U.N. seeks aid as floods worsen

SUKKUR, Pakistan – The United Nations appealed Wednesday for $459 million in emergency aid for Pakistan as fresh monsoon rains raised fears that new flooding could drive more people from their homes, deepening the humanitarian catastrophe.

Storms lashed the mountainous northwest, close to the border with Afghanistan, and the northeastern Gilgit region, swelling rivers that empty into the central Indus River before it reaches the city of Sukkur in southern Sindh province, which already is full of people displaced from surrounding areas.

More flooding could prevent vital repairs to Indus River embankments and dikes that protect farmland, allowing water to spread even farther when the fresh flows reach Sukkur sometime next week.

“Once this peak passes, another flood is being formed in the mountains and then a third,” Sindh’s irrigation minister, Saifullah Dharejo, said. “If we cannot plug the breaches (in the embankments), the water will keep expanding out.”

“This is a grave situation,” he said.

Sindh is now the focus of the worst floods in Pakistan’s history. They reached the province after washing down the Indus River Valley, powered by unusually fierce monsoon rains that began in northern areas of the country some three weeks ago.

The United Nations appealed Wednesday for emergency aid, warning that even those who had been saved from drowning were threatened with sickness and hunger.

In Sukkur, the head of Sindh’s provincial government, Qaim Ali Shah, dismissed the amount of international aid pledged so far as “peanuts.”

The U.S. will be beefing up its assistance to the relief effort with 19 helicopters from the USS Peleliu, an amphibious assault vessel that is deploying off the Pakistani port city of Karachi, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced Wednesday in Tampa, Fla. The helicopters will be used to distribute food aid and ferry displaced people.