Iran vows more aid camps in Pakistan

The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) says it plans to set up two more makeshift medical camps in flood-stricken Pakistan and boost aid supplies to the country.

“The [Iranian] Red Crescent plans to set up two more medical camps …and to dispatch more than 1,350 tons in medical and food supplies for the [flood] victims,” IRCS President Abolhassan Faghih said Sunday.

Faghih added that the relief body has already assembled one camp capable of treating and sheltering up to 10,000 people in the southern Sindh Province which has been hit worst by the month-long floods.

The new camps will be raised in Punjab region and the provincial capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan Province, Quetta. Overall, the camps will have the capacity to shelter and treat more than 30,000 people.

The IRCS president said national donations to the Iranian Red Crescent Society alone had reached IRR 20 billion (USD 2 million).

He noted that the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) backed relief efforts, with the Air Force playing a major role in mobilizing aid supplies.

The floods have washed through one-fifth of Pakistan, killing at least 1,760 people and affecting another 17 million in what the United Nations has described the country’s worst-ever humanitarian disaster.