UN says 800,000 cut off by floods
<p>Pakistani flood survivors line up for food in a camp set up for displaced people in Nowshera, Pakistan on Tuesday. Recovering from the devastating floods still battering Pakistan will take at least three years, the president said, as the waters swept south after leaving millions homeless and submerging millions of acres of farmland.</p>
<p>Tents are seen from the air at a camp set up by the Pakistan Army for thousands of Pakistanis displaced by flood waters in Sukkar, Sindh province, southern Pakistan, Tuesday.</p>
ISLAMABAD (AP) - Floods have isolated about 800,000 people in Pakistan who are now only reachable by air and aid workers need at least 40 more helicopters to ferry lifesaving aid to the increasingly desperate people, the United Nations said.
The appeal Tuesday was an indication of the massive problems facing the relief effort in Pakistan more than three weeks after the floods hit the country, affecting more than 17 million people and raising concerns about possible social unrest and political instability.
"These unprecedented floods pose unprecedented logistical challenges, and this requires an extraordinary effort by the international community," said John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.
Earlier, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said hundreds of health facilities had been damaged and tens of thousands of medical workers displaced and the country's chief meteorologist warned that it would be two weeks until the Indus River - the focus of the flooding still sweeping through the country - returns to normal levels.
Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry said high tides in the Arabian Sea would slow the drainage of the Indus into it, but that those tides would begin changing Wednesday. He said the Indus would reach peak flood stage late this week.
The floods began with hammering monsoon rains in the northwest and have swept southwards.
Many of those cut off are in the mountainous northwest, where roads and bridges have been swept away.
The United States has deployed at least 18 helicopters that are flying regular relief missions, but the United Nations said it would need at least 40 more heavy-lift choppers working at full-capacity to reach the estimated 800,000 stranded in the country.