Pakistan floods 'kill 800' people and affect a million

The UN's Manuel Bessler in Pakistan says many areas are cut off

The worst monsoon floods in living memory have killed at least 800 people and affected one million in north-west Pakistan, a local official has said.

Rescuers are struggling to reach inundated areas where transport and communication are down.

Peshawar, the area's largest city with a 3m-strong population, is cut off.

At least 60 people have died across the border in Afghanistan where floods affected four provinces.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier) province, announced the latest death toll. Earlier, he described the floods as the province's worst ever.

Pakistani soldiers evacuate stranded villagers near Nowshera, Pakistan on July 30, 2010

Manuel Bessler, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) in Pakistan, told the BBC about 1m people's lives had been disrupted.

He could not say with certainty the full scale of the emergency in Pakistan, as he was having trouble reaching his own offices in some of the worst-affected areas.

UN aid workers were helping to co-ordinate efforts to provide shelter, health care, drinking water and ready-to-eat food rations, he said.

There was concern, he added, that swollen rivers running south would carry the floods to provinces like Sindh where heavy rain was forecast in coming days.