India-Pakistan Flood Victims Pack Relief Centers as Toll Hits 400
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Bewildered families, nursing children and clutching meagre belongings, packed Tuesday into makeshift relief centers after fleeing floods in India and Pakistan that have now claimed more than 400 lives.
The army was airlifting boats to the worst-hit areas of Indian Kashmir, where whole villages have been submerged and hundreds of thousands are stranded in the region's worst flooding for half a century.
"The situation in Kashmir Valley is still very grim, it is quite critical," said Rajesh Kumar, police Inspector General of the Jammu region in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
"I don't know how many exactly, but there are many stuck in neck-deep water and need help as soon as possible," he told AFP.
"The death toll as of now is around 200 people," he added.
In neighboring Pakistan the number of dead stood at 206, with most killed in Punjab province, officials have said.
Thousands of troops, police and other emergency personnel have been deployed in both countries to deliver drinking water, blankets and other relief supplies using helicopters and boats.
In India, rescue efforts were focused on flooded south Kashmir and the Himalayan region's main city of Srinagar, with some 400,000 people still stranded, the Press Trust of India news agency (PTI) quoted local officials as saying.
At a wedding hall on Srinagar's outskirts, some 400 people were sitting or lying on the floor in small groups, taking stock of their lives after floodwaters submerged their homes.
"Everything happened so fast. The waters came rushing and we didn't have time to pack anything," Ruqsat Banu said as she comforted her elderly in-laws.
