500,000 More Evacuated in Flood-Ravaged Pakistan

(Aug. 6) -- More monsoons grounded U.S. rescue and relief helicopters today in waterlogged northwest Pakistan, and half a million more people have been evacuated farther south as the country's worst floods in 80 years get even worse.

No letup in the rain was expected for the weekend, threatening crops and the safety of more than 4 million people who have been displaced from villages submerged by torrential rains. Heavier than normal monsoons began last week in Pakistan's northwest and are spreading southward to Sindh province, where more than 500,000 people are now being evacuated, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. At least 1,500 people have been killed across Pakistan in the past week.

More than a quarter million homes have been destroyed, but relief workers have been able to distribute only 10,000 tents, it said. Phone and electricity lines remain downed across huge swaths of Pakistan, possibly preventing trapped residents from calling for help. Reports of acute diarrhea are emerging, and the fear is that waterborne diseases could sweep the population quickly.

Also today, a flash flood inundated the normally dry Ladakh region, an Indian-controlled section of Kashmir, sweeping away houses and killing at least 85 people, The Associated Press reported.

In Pakistan on Thursday, six U.S. Army helicopters -- four Chinooks and two Black Hawks -- evacuated more than 800 people from the Swat Valley and transported 66,000 pounds of relief supplies, the U.S. Embassy said. Washington also pledged an additional $25 million in flood relief, on top of a previous $10 million commitment, it said.

But those flights have now been grounded, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority told news agencies, in a development that's been frustrating both to pilots eager to help and to desperate residents on the ground.

"The devastation caused by the floods is beyond imagination, and the world is responding, but slowly," Arbab Tahir Khan, spokesman for the ruling party in Pakistan's hard-hit northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told The Washington Post. "They should speed up their response."

Pakistan's government has come under fierce criticism for not doing enough to help flood victims, especially after President Asif Ali Zardari decided to go ahead with a high-profile trip to Europe this week instead of staying home to lead relief efforts.

Uzma Shafi, an aid worker with the charity Plan International, told The Guardian that refugee camps for those displaced by the floods are "being arranged, but the government does not have the capacity to cope with all these people."