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UN: Helicopters needed to reach 800,000 people trapped by floods

Other News Materials 24 August 2010 23:28 (UTC +04:00)
The United Nations called Tuesday for governments to provide at least 40 heavy-lift helicopters that can carry critical emergency supplies to some 800,000 Pakistanis trapped by floods, dpa reported.
UN: Helicopters needed to reach 800,000 people trapped by floods

The United Nations called Tuesday for governments to provide at least 40 heavy-lift helicopters that can carry critical emergency supplies to some 800,000 Pakistanis trapped by floods, dpa reported.

Those people are reachable only by air as severe flooding in parts of Pakistan, particularly in the north, has severed all access to some of the victims, the UN humanitarian affairs and World Food Programme (WFP) said.

"These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community", said John Holmes, the UN under secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

Holmes accompanied UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during a visit on August 15 to flooded areas in Pakistan.

"We need at least 40 additional heavy-lift helicopters, working at full capacity, to reach the huge numbers of increasingly desperate people with life-saving relief," said WFP's Marcus Prior.

WFP has deployed three of its own helicopters and is flying another 12 helicopters provided by Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority in the massive humanitarian operations underway to assist flood victims.

More than 17 million people have been affected by the floods, and eight millions of them require immediate life-saving aid. Pakistan said the floods have destroyed or damaged 1.2 million homes. More than one million people are living in tents and at least five million others are in need of emergency shelter.

The UN said dozens of bridges and long stretches of roads have been washed away by flood waters in the Swat Valley of the north- western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK), as well as in the mountainous areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, located further east.

In Pakistan's central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh, where the Indus River is bursting its banks, flood waters have cut off all access to several areas where people remain trapped.

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