Sharjah 24 – AFP: The United Nations and the Pakistani government launched an emergency appeal for $160 million on Tuesday to help those hit hardest by the floods devastating the country.

The funds will provide 5.2 million of the worst-affected and most vulnerable people with food, clean water, sanitation, emergency education, protection and health support, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, calling the disaster a "colossal crisis".

"Pakistan is awash in suffering. The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids -- the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding," he said in a video statement.

The aid, covering the initial six months of the crisis response, will help to avoid outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, and to provide nutrition aid to young children and their mothers.

It will also provide assistance to refugees and facilitate schemes to reunite families separated by the disaster.

"The people of Pakistan urgently need international solidarity and support," Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, told a press briefing in Geneva.

He said some 500,000 people displaced by the floods were sheltering in relief camps, with many more temporarily staying with host families.

Around 150 bridges have been washed away, he said, and 3,500 kilometres (2,175 miles) of roads damaged in flooding and landslides, hampering access.

"The heavy rains are forecast to continue and with many dams and rivers already at flood levels, the flooding is likely to get worse before it gets better," Laerke said.

Tens of millions of people have been affected by relentless monsoon rains that have submerged a third of Pakistan and claimed more than 1,100 lives.

The rains that began in June have unleashed the worst flooding in more than a decade, washing away swathes of vital crops and damaging or destroying more than a million homes.