Pakistan Flooding News

With hundreds of villages marooned and highways and bridges cut in half by swollen rivers, food rations and access to clean water have only been provided to around 500,000 million flood survivors, the U.N. said.

The United Nations has warned that up to 3.5 million children could be in danger of contracting deadly diseases carried through contaminated water and insects in a crisis that has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of Pakistan's 170 million people.

"We have a country which has endemic watery diarrhea, endemic cholera, endemic upper respiratory infections and we have the conditions for much much expanded problems," Daniel Toole, UNICEF Regional Director for South Asia, told a news conference.

"We cannot spend pledges. We cannot buy purification tablets, we cannot support Pakistan with pledges. I urge the international community to urgently change pledges into checks."

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization spokesman Ali Khan said Pakistan could face food shortages if its farmers miss the sowing season which is due to start next month.

Up to 1,600 people have been killed and 2 million made homeless in Pakistan's worst floods in decades. The United Nations has reported the first case of cholera, but only a third of the $459 million aid needed for initial relief has arrived.