WASHINGTON: The United States is conducting a military aid mission to flood-devastated Pakistan, the US armed forces’ Central Command said Friday.
“CENTCOM is sending an assessment team to Islamabad to determine what potential support DoD (the US Department of Defense) can provide… as part of the United States’ assistance to the flooding crisis in Pakistan,” spokesman Colonel Joe Buccino said in a statement.
The decision followed a phone conversation on Thursday between CENTCOM commander General Erik Kurilla and Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, the spokesman said.
The US is the top arms supplier to Pakistan’s military, but relations between the two countries are often rocky.
Read more: Pakistan’s flood tragedy ‘bigger than its resources’
The toll from cataclysmic floods in Pakistan continued to climb on Saturday with 57 more deaths, 25 of them children, as the country grapples with a relief and rescue operation of near unprecedented scale.
Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in northern mountains brought floods that have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,265 people, including 441 children. The inundation, blamed on climate change, is still spreading.
The proportion of children’s deaths has raised concern. On Friday, the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF) said there was a risk of “many more” child deaths from disease after floods.
The floods that have inundated a third of the country were preceded by four heatwaves and multiple raging forest fires, the disaster management chief told the high-level meeting, highlighting the effects of climate change in the South Asian nation.
Pakistan has received nearly 190% more rain than the 30-year average in the quarter through August, totalling 390.7 millimetres (15.38 inches). Sindh province, with a population of 50 million, was hardest hit, getting 464% more rain than the 30-year average.
Aid has flowed in from a number of countries, with the first humanitarian assistance flight from France landing on Saturday morning in Islamabad. But Pakistan’s largest charity group has said there were still millions who had not been reached by aid and relief efforts.
Initial estimates of the damage have been put at $10 billion, but surveys are still being conducted along withinternational organisations.
The United Nations has appealed for $160 million in aid to help tackle what it said was an “unprecedented climatecatastrophe” as Pakistan’s navy has fanned out inland to carry out relief operations in areas that resemble a sea.
