Pakistan’s government has appealed for international help to tackle a flooding emergency that has killed more than 1,000 people and threatens to leave a third of the country – an area roughly the size of Britain – underwater.
Foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Sunday night that floods brought on by weeks of extreme monsoonal rainfall and melting glaciers would worsen Pakistan’s already dire economic situation and that financial aid was needed.
“Going forward, I would expect not only the International Monetary Fund, but the international community and international agencies to truly grasp the level of devastation,” he said.
“I haven’t seen destruction of this scale, I find it very difficult to put into words … it is overwhelming,” he said. Many crops that provided much of the population’s livelihoods had been wiped out, he added.
“Obviously this will have an effect on the overall economic situation,” he said.
