Pakistan landslides, floods kill another 50*

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 5 (AFP) Aug 05, 2006

Monsoon rains triggered fresh landslides and floods in northern Pakistan
Friday, as officials and reports said another 50 people had died in
weather-related incidents.

Twelve people were killed Friday and seven were missing after a flash
flood swept their minibus into a canal as they travelled to a religious
school near Rawalpindi, state media said.

The dead included three children and seven women, while 12 passengers
were rescued, the Associated Press of Pakistan said.

Another four people drowned in a swollen river near Tatta Khel, a town
in the restive Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, which
borders Afghanistan, local officials said.

In the northwestern district of Mansehra, which was badly hit by last
October's South Asian earthquake, officials said 31 people were killed
in the past four days, mainly in landslides.

Officials had previously only said that 10 people died in the district
when a landslide flattened quake survivors' tents on Thursday.

District mayor Sardar Yousaf said around 20 of the deaths had happened
around Balakot, a tourist town devastated by the October 8 quake that
killed 75,000 people and left three million homeless.

A further 300 families lost tents or temporary shelters in landslides
and were being shifted to refugee camps.

A key road from Balakot to the mountainous Kaghan Valley that was only
recently reopened after the earthquake had been cut again, Yousaf said.

"There may be food shortages so we are concerned about people who are
stranded in higher areas," he said.

Landslides at the weekend also blocked the only route between
Muzaffarabad, the capital of quake-hit Pakistani Kashmir, and the scenic
Neelum Valley.

The UN refugee agency says landslides and floods have forced 6,000 quake
survivors to return to emergency camps and that nearly 20,000 others are
set to do so.

"The likelihood of larger displacement due to the ongoing monsoon is
very grave," Kilian Kleinschmidt, the agency's senior emergency
coordinator for the South Asia earthquake, told AFP in an interview late
Thursday.

Incidents blamed on the annual monsoon rains have now claimed more than
140 lives in Pakistan since they started early last month. In
neighbouring India they have killed more than 300 people.