Pakistan PM calls for global flood help

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called for international help for up to five million people affected by recent monsoon rains.

Floods in Pakistan have killed 138 people in a month and affected up to five million more, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

Sindh, a flood-prone southern province, was the hardest-hit area with thousands of houses and large areas of crops destroyed.

"International organisations and the world community should focus their attention on the affected people," Gilani said in an address to the nation late Saturday.

"We are sure that international organisations and the world community would sympathetically consider the appeal by the President of Pakistan and take immediate steps for the rehabilitation of flood-affected people."

President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday asked the United Nations to issue an international appeal for humanitarian assistance.

Gilani said that recent rains in Sindh were almost two and a half times normal levels, and had inundated an area of 4.1 million acres, including 1.7 million acres of crops.

He said 700,000 houses were damaged across 21 districts, 150,000 people in relief camps needed immediate assistance, and 64,000 livestock had been lost.

The UN children's agency said up to 2.5 million children in southern Pakistan had been affected by the monsoon floods.

UNICEF said many people were still recovering from last year, when the worst floods in Pakistan's history affected 21 million people and killed an estimated 1,750, with the south again taking the brunt of the devastation.

"Children are the most vulnerable in any emergency -- in this disaster, many are experiencing the devastating effects of a flood emergency for the second time in a year," the organisation's Pakistan head, Dan Rohrmann, said in a statement.