SUKKUR, Pakistan, Aug 230, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Tens of millions of people
across Pakistan were Monday battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade,
with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed and the country's
main river threatening to burst its banks.

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said a third of the nation was under
water, creating a "crisis of unimaginable proportions".

Officials say 1,136 people have died since June, when the seasonal rains
began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the
mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers washed away
roads and bridges.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes
and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it can also bring destruction.

This year's flooding has affected more than 33 million people -- one in seven
Pakistanis -- said the National Disaster Management Authority.

"It's all one big ocean, there's no dry land to pump the water out," Rehman
told AFP, adding the economic cost will be devastating.

This year's floods are comparable to those of 2010, the worst on record, when
more than 2,000 people died.

Flood victims have taken refuge in makeshift camps that have sprung up across
the country, where desperation is setting in.

"Living here is miserable. Our self-respect is at stake," said Fazal e Malik,
sheltering in the grounds of a school now home to around 2,500 people in the
town of Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"I stink but there is no place to take a shower. There are no fans."

Near Sukkur, a city in southern Sindh province and home to an ageing
colonial-era barrage on the Indus River that is vital to preventing further
catastrophe, one farmer lamented the devastation wrought on his rice fields.

Millions of acres of rich farmland have been flooded by weeks of non-stop
rain, but now the Indus is threatening to burst its banks as torrents of
water course downstream from tributaries in the north.

"Our crop spanned over 5,000 acres on which the best quality rice was sown
and is eaten by you and us," Khalil Ahmed, 70, told AFP.

"All that is finished."

- Landscape of water -

Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water, hampering a massive
military-led relief operation.

"There are no landing strips or approaches available... our pilots find it
difficult to land," one senior officer told AFP.

The army's helicopters were also struggling to pluck people to safety in the
north, where soaring mountains and deep valleys make for treacherous flying
conditions.

Many rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province -- which boasts some of Pakistan's
best tourist spots -- have overflowed, demolishing scores of buildings
including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent.

The government has declared an emergency and appealed for international help,
and on Sunday the first aid flights began arriving -- from Turkey and the
UAE.

The floods could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan, where the
economy is in free fall.

In Washington later Monday, the International Monetary Fund executive board
approved the revival of a $6 billion loan programme essential for the country
to service its foreign debt.

"We should now be getting the 7th & 8th tranche of $1.17 billion," Finance
Minister Miftah Ismail said on Twitter.

The United Nations announced that it will launch a formal appeal Tuesday for
$160 million to fund emergency aid for the flood-battered country.

"The situation is expected to worsen with more ongoing rainfall," Stephane
Dujarric, the UN Secretary-General spokesman, warned during a press briefing
Monday. The UN has already allocated $10 million in emergency aid.

But it is already clear it will take more to repair and rebuild after this
monsoon.

Prices of basic goods -- particularly onions, tomatoes and chickpeas -- are
soaring as vendors bemoan a lack of supplies from the flooded breadbasket
provinces of Sindh and Punjab.

The meteorological office said the country as a whole had been deluged with
twice the usual monsoon rainfall, but Balochistan and Sindh had seen more
than four times the average of the last three decades.

Padidan, a small town in Sindh, was drenched by more than 1.2 metres (47
inches) of rain since June, making it the wettest place in Pakistan.

- More arriving daily -

Across Sindh, thousands of displaced people are camped alongside elevated
highways and railway tracks -- often the only dry spots as far as the eye can
see.

More are arriving daily at Sukkur's city ring road, belongings piled on boats
and tractor trollies, looking for shelter until the floodwaters recede.

Sukkur Barrage supervisor Aziz Soomro told AFP the main headway of water was
expected to arrive around September 5, but he was confident the 90-year-old
sluice gates would cope.

The barrage diverts water from the Indus into 10,000 kilometers (6,210 miles)
of canals that make up one of the world's biggest irrigation schemes, but the
farms it supplies are now mostly under water.

The only bright spark was the latest weather report that said there was
little chance of rain for the rest of the week.