Flood-hit Pakistan 'will need billions to recover'

The warning came as officials said at least 53 people were killed in landslides in northern Pakistan and authorities rushed to evacuate thousands of people threatened by flooding that submerged villages in the south. The new devastation added to the disaster that has affected an estimated 15 million people.

The government has struggled to cope with the scale of the disaster, which has killed at least 1,500 people, prompting the international community to help by donating tens of millions of dollars and providing relief supplies.

The amount raised by the British public has topped 5m, UK charities said today, with money continuing to pour in.

The Disasters Emergency Committee said some 300,000 people have already been provided with emergency care, clean water, food or shelter as a result of British aid.

But the UN special envoy for the disaster, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said the need for foreign aid would be much greater going forward and could be difficult to procure given the financial crisis around the world.

The UN is still calculating specific figures, but the envoy said that "the emergency phase will require hundreds of millions of dollars and the recovery and reconstruction part will require billions of dollars".

Much of that money will be needed in the north-west province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the site of the worst damage from floods that first hit two weeks ago after extremely heavy monsoon rains. But as the floodwaters rushed south, they also brought death and destruction to the central and southern provinces of Punjab and Sindh.

The Indus river overflowed its banks near the city of Sukkur in Sindh yesterday, submerging the village of Mor Khan Jatoi with chest-high water and destroying many of its 1,500 mud houses.

Many flood victims have complained that they have not received aid quickly enough or at all, further undermining support for a government that was already unpopular.

In Pakistan's far north, landslides triggered by heavy rains killed at least 53 people in two villages in the Gilgit-Baltistan area, senior government official Ali Mohamamd Sikandar said.

The landslides killed 37 people in the village of Kumra and 16 in Ghanche, he said. All the bodies in Ghanche have been recovered. Only 12 bodies have been found in Kumra, but the other 25 who are missing are presumed dead.

At least 1.4 million acres of crops were destroyed in Punjab, the breadbasket for the rest of Pakistan, said the UN. Many more crops were devastated in the northwest, where many residents were still trying to recover from intense battles between the Taliban and the army last year.

Many foreign countries have stepped in to help the government, including the US, which has pledged millions of dollars.

Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani appealed for more international help saying the government couldn't cope with the disaster on its own.

"We will exhaust our resources to rescue, provide food, medicine and shelter, but it is beyond our capacity, so we will appeal to the world," said Mr Gilani during a visit to Sukkur.