Pakistan monsoon floods kill 800

Hundreds of homes and vast swathes of farmland were destroyed in the northwest and Pakistani Kashmir, with the main highway to China reportedly cut and communities isolated as monsoon rains caused flash floods and landslides.

The United Nations said almost a million people had been affected by the flooding, and at least 45 bridges destroyed around Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Television footage and photos shot from helicopters showed people clinging to the walls and roof tops of damaged houses as gushing waters rampaged through inundated villages.

Carrying their belongings and with children on their shoulders, some even walked barefoot through the water to seek safety.

“This is the worst ever flood in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the country's history,” provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.

“The death toll in floods and rain-related incidents has risen up to 800 across the province,” he said.

Another 150 people were missing in the northwestern province, where many impoverished families live in remote mountain villages.

More than one million people have been affected, the minister said, adding that more than 3,700 houses had been swept away by floods and that the number of homeless people was rising.

Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, and the districts of Swat and Shangla were cut off from the rest of country as roads and highways were submerged, he said.

Police said five people were drowned when their boat capsized near the northwestern town of Nowshehra on Saturday.

An AFP reporter saw hundreds of people arriving in Peshawar city, many of them without any belongings.

Muqaddir Khan, 25, who arrived with nine other family members, told AFP in a suburb of Peshawar that he had lost everything in flood.

“I labored hard in Saudi Arabia for three years and set up a small shop which was swept away by flood in minutes. I have lost everything,” Khan said.

Razia Bibi, 48, said she and her family spent the night awake as water kept rising.

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