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TechnoratiPakistan evacuates southern city as waters breach defences
Pakistan has ordered the evacuation of 300,000 people from the southern town of Thatta, after floodwaters suddenly breached defences late on Thursday. The UN warns that the humanitarian crisis caused by Pakistan's worst flooding in decades is worsening.
"We ordered people of Thatta city on Thursday night to move to safer places after floods breached an embankment at Faqir Jogoth village," local official Manzoor Sheikh told AFP.
At least 70 per cent of Thatta's population of approximately 300,000 people had so far moved to safer areas and floodwaters are fast heading towards the city, he said.
"We hope that the [army] engineers will be able to repair the breach or otherwise floodwaters will inundate Thatta city."
The surrounding towns of Sujawal, Mirpur Bathoro and Darro have already been evacuated, according to Sheikh.
Around a fifth of Pakistan has so far been affected by flooding.
Thatta is in the southern province of Sindh, one of the worst affected areas. "It is getting from bad to worse [in Sindh]," said a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Maurizio Giuliano, in Islamabad.
"We are delivering faster and faster but the floods seem determined to outrun our response."
In the past 48 hours alone, he estimates, one million people in Sindh have been displaced.
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