WASHINGTON, Sep 20, 2010 (IPS) - The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has announced it will provide an additional 75 million dollars in food aid to help Pakistan cope with floods that have affected about one-fifth of the country - including some 20 million people - since they began in July.
That will bring total U.S. assistance to Islamabad to some 345 million dollars, not including about 55 million dollars in in-kind military support, including the deployment of helicopters from Afghanistan to aid in rescue efforts, according to senior U.S. officials who briefed reporters on the situation here Monday.
The additional assistance was announced in the wake of an unprecedented appeal Friday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for two billion dollars in flood relief this year, a four-fold increase in what the U.N. had requested in the first half of August as the floods swept from the frontier regions high in the Himalayas through the Punjab, eastern Baluchistan and Sindh into the Arabian Sea.
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