Death toll from Pakistan floods tops 1,100

People clear debris as their houses were flooded following heavy monsoon rains in northwest Pakistan's Nasir-Bagh on Aug. 1, 2010. The current horrible wave of floods and landslides triggered by torrential monsoon rains has killed more than 900 people in Pakistan while 1 million people have become homeless as the flood is now hitting western and southern parts of the country. Photo: Xinhua

The death toll from Pakistan's worst floods in history topped 1,100 Sunday as outbreaks of water-borne disease emerged and penniless survivors sought refuge from the raging torrents.

"The floods have killed more than 1,100 people in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and affected over 1.5 million," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told AFP.

"We are also getting confirmation of reports about an outbreak of cholera in some areas of Swat," he said.

A senior official in the provincial Disaster Management Authority also confirmed the death toll.

Intense rains, flash floods and landslides around the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have destroyed thousands of homes over the past week.

About 30,000 people were stranded on their rooftops and in higher areas as they tried to escape rushing floodwaters, a UN official told CNN Sunday.

Hundreds of survivors found shelter in schools in Peshawar, the main city in northwest Paki-stan, and in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controled Kashmir, after escaping the floods with children on their backs.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department said an "unprecedented" 312 millimeters of rain had fallen in 36 hours in the northwest.

It predicted that Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir, eastern parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and eastern parts of Balochistan would receive more monsoon rains as soon as today.