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Fresh floods test defenses in deluge-hit south Pakistani city
Police official Jawed Amjad said the bus, traveling from Karachi to Peshawar, crashed into the ravine about 3 a.m. He said 29 of the 59 passengers were rescued, 13 bodies were recovered and 17 people were missing. The missing may have been swept away in the rushing waters, he said.
The floods have left around 6 million people homeless from the mountainous north to the southern plains. The floods are expected to begin draining into the Arabian Sea in the coming days.
On Monday, hundreds of people who had fled the floods blocked a highway near the town of Kot Adu in Punjab province to protest the slow pace of aid deliveries. “No food came here for the last two days ... We can wait -- children can’t,” said Mohammad Iqbal, one of about 400 protesters.
Pakistan’s shaky government has come under criticism for its response and will require billions of dollars in foreign aid to rebuild. The scale of the disaster has raised fears that extremists such as the Taliban may regroup in the misery.
The latest town under threat from the Indus River is Shadad Kot in southern Sindh province. On the eastern side of the city, the levee was under pressure from nine-foot high waters, said Yaseen Shar, the top administrative official there.
“We are fighting this constant threat by filling the breaches with stones and sand bags but it is a very challenging task,” he said.
Most of the city’s 350,000 people have moved to relief camps or to towns and cities away from the danger. Local charities, the Pakistani army and international agencies are providing food, water, medicine and shelter to the displaced, but millions have received little or help. Aid officials warn that waterborne diseases like cholera now pose a real threat.
On Sunday, the government said the world has given or pledged more than $800 million of aid to the country. Elsewhere, southern China was bracing for heavy rain and strong winds from a new tropical storm heading its way, state media said on Monday, the latest in a series of severe weather which has killed nearly 3,000 people so far this year. Tropical storm Mindulle was expected to hit the southern island province of Hainan late on Monday or early today, state news agency Xinhua said, before heading into neighboring Guangdong province and possibly affecting Vietnam. Ships have been stopped from leaving port and more than 20,000 fishing boats have been told to take shelter in safe harbors, the report added. The rubber-producing area is also popular with tourists.
Chan Siu-wai of the Hong Kong Observatory said the storm would not likely be a big one.
“This year there were some storms that attained even higher intensity that tracked even closer to Hainan island. It’s not the strongest one this year,” he said.
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