Floods Devastate Remote Pakistani Valley

In the stunning valleys of northwest Pakistan, stranded villagers struggle to survive after the devastating floods over five weeks ago. Many victims are forced to settle in improvised homes, struggling daily for survival. Villagers from over 100 communities are living in dangerous conditions.

Once a trekker's paradise, most of the beautiful valleys of the Hindukush Mountains in northwest Pakistan are now sealed off from the outside world.

More than five weeks after floods wreaked havoc across the region, villagers from remote village areas of Chitral District are struggling for basic survival.

In the northernmost Yarkhun Valley, the only bridge linking it to the outside world washed away.
15 other bridges along the Yarkhun River have also been destroyed.

In some places, residents say the army air dropped two weeks' worth of rations after the floods, but they have long been consumed.

Scores of houses were flattened by heavy rains and flash floods, and crops and other livelihoods have been destroyed.

Many are living in tents and caves.

[Hameed Hussain, Retired Soldier, Flood Victim]:
"We cannot survive in the tent, so we went up the mountain and found caves under the rocks. We made our kitchen there and we have taken water and our belongings up there. We come down here to sleep. Some people sleep in the caves."

People living on both sides of the Yarkhun River are now compelled to cross it on makeshift bridges or take the more dangerous mountain roads thousands of feet above sea level.

Over 100 villages and hamlets lie along the 150-km-long valley of Yarkhun, which stretches up to the Wakhan corridor in Afghanistan.