• Disease sparks rise in flood death toll
  
• Up to 1500 dead, 2.5m people affected
• Tens of thousands of children hit with gastro
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FLASH floods triggered by torrential monsoon rains so far killed up to 1500 people in Pakistan, a government minister confirmed this morning.

"There are 774 deaths registered with us, but the total number killed in the flood is 1200 to 1500," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told a news conference in Peshawar.

"There are 129 people still missing."

Pakistan's largest charity, the Edhi Foundation, and a northwest-based Cabinet minister earlier put the death toll at more than 1200.

But officials in other provinces who earlier gave a combined death toll of 128 effectively pushed the overall nationwide toll to more than 1300.

The International Committee of the Red Cross earlier announced that up to 2.5 million people across Pakistan were affected by the heavy flooding.

"In the worst-affected areas, entire villages were washed away without warning by walls of flood water," it said in a statement, noting that thousands of people "have lost everything."

Pakistani officials warned that a lack of drinking water was spreading diseases, including cholera, and said they were working to evacuate people from affected areas such as Swat, the scene last summer of a major offensive against the Taliban.

Syed Zahir Ali Shah, the health minister for the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, estimated that about 100,000 people, mostly children, were suffering from illness such as gastroenteritis.

A spokesman for the charity World Vision said teams had visited those affected around the main northwestern city of Peshawar but that those further north had been inaccessible by road until yesterday morning.

"They don't have drinking water or food. They said there have been some visible signs of water-borne diseases," Muhammad Ali said, warning that the death toll was likely to rise further as aid workers reached more areas.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon pledged aid of up to $11 million to meet the humanitarian needs of those affected by the crisis, saying he was "deeply saddened" by the floods.

The US government announced a $10 million aid pledge and rushed helicopters and boats to Pakistan. China also promised $1.5 million, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The UK pledged £5 million ($13 million) to help those left homeless by the floods.

In further bad news, Pakistan's meteorological service forecast rains of up to 200 millimetres in the next weeks across the northwest, Pakistani-administered Kashmir, the central province of Punjab and Sindh in the south.