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Friday, December 10, 2010

One million flood-hit Pakistanis still need basic aid

The floods which started in July, decimated entire villages from the far north to the deep south, disrupting the lives of more than 18 million people in a disaster aid workers say was bigger than the 2004 tsunami or January's earthquake in Haiti.

But while water levels have receded in the northern parts of the country and many of those uprooted are returning home, the head of the U.N. office responsible for emergencies in Pakistan said lifesaving aid is still urgently required in the south.

"We have a protracted humanitarian crisis in the south where we still have one million people displaced because of flooding in the province of Sindh," Manuel Bessler, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Pakistan, told AlertNet in an interview.

"The basic survival items of food, water and sanitation, shelter and healthcare are urgently required."

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