Pakistan floods isolate 800,000 people — UN

ISLAMABAD – About 800,000 people have been cut off by floods in Pakistan and are only reachable by air, the United Nations said Tuesday, adding it needs at least 40 more helicopters to ferry lifesaving aid to increasingly desperate people. The appeal was an indication of the massive problems facing the relief effort in Pakistan more than three weeks after the floods hit the country, affecting more than 17 million people and raising concerns about possible social unrest and political instability. "These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community," said John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs. Earlier, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said hundreds of health facilities had been damaged and tens of thousands of medical workers displaced and the country's chief meteorologist warned that it would be two weeks until the Indus River — the focus of the flooding still sweeping through the country — returns to normal levels. Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry said high tides in the Arabian Sea would slow the drainage of the Indus into it. Those tides, he said, will begin changing on Aug. 25. "The flood situation is not yet over," Chaudhry said, adding that the Indus would reach peak flood stage late this week. The floods began with hammering monsoon rains in the northwest and have swept southwards.—AP