ISLAMABAD: The United Nations today issued a flash appeal to raise $160 million for Pakistan to pace up relief operations to help victims of floods and rehabilitate the damaged infrastructure.
So far, floods have killed more than 1,100 people, affected 33 million and destroyed infrastructure and crops.
Early estimates indicate damage from the floods at more than $10 billion and the UN’s flash appeal is aimed at enabling the government to needy people.
“Pakistan is awash in suffering,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a video message for the launch of the appeal in Islamabad and Geneva.
“The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids — the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding.”
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also spoke on the occasion. He urged nations to extend their support to Pakistan in these challenging times.
Bilawal said the devastation witnessed in Pakistan following the recent spell of unprecedented rains and floods was nature’s message that the country had become “ground zero” for global warming, the “biggest existential threat” of this century.
“The current cycle of super flooding we see today is part of extreme weather patterns. Unprecedented levels of cloud bursts and torrential rains have triggered widespread devastation, urban flooding, flash floods and landslides, resulting in the loss of human life, livelihoods and livestock,” Bilawal added.
He described this year’s “super floods” as a “climate calamity”, adding that “what we are facing today has been no above average monsoon.
