FAZILPUR, Sept 5 (AFP): Engineers breached Pakistan's biggest freshwater lake to drain water threatening nearby towns, officials said Monday, as heavy rain poured misery on millions affected by the country's worst floods in history.
Nearly a third of Pakistan is under water-an area the size of the United Kingdom-following months of record monsoon rains that have killed 1,300 people and washed away homes, businesses, roads and bridges.
Officials say the repair bill will top $10 billion for a country already in the grip of economic crisis, with hundreds of thousands homeless as the monsoon draws to an end and winter approaches.
"There is nowhere to shower or go to the bathroom," said Zebunnisa Bibi, sheltering near Fazilpur, in Punjab province, where 65 tents are now home to more than 500 people who fled their inundated villages for higher land.
Similar tent camps have mushroomed across much of the south and west of Pakistan, where rain has nowhere to drain because rivers are already in full flow as a result of torrential downpours in the north.
Sindh province Information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon told AFP Monday that engineers had to cut a channel into Lake Manchar to drain water that was threatening the towns of Sehwan and Bhan Saeedabad, with a combined population of nearly half a million.
Still, thousands had to be evacuated from smaller settlements submerged by the newly directed channel.
"The flood water was diverted but the threat is still far from over," Memon said.
"We are trying our best to stop the inundation of more villages."
Lake Manchar, which lies west of the Indus River, varies in size according to the season and rainfall, but is currently spread over as wide an area as anyone can recall.
Much of Sindh and parts of Balochistan have become a vast landscape of water, with displaced locals huddled miserably on elevated roads, rail tracks and other high ground.
Human and animal waste in the fetid water attracts swarms of flies, while outbreaks of dengue are being reported from mosquitos breeding in the swamplands.
