MARK COLVIN: Floods are still rising in Pakistan, and there's probably more rain on the way in the aftermath of the mass flooding which has displaced around 20 million people there.
In three towns in the southern province of Sindh a senior administration official warned about half a million people in three towns should evacuate to somewhere safer.
In Washington, a US official said the Pakistani Taliban were planning to attack foreign aid workers engaged in the relief effort.
I'm joined from Sukkur in Sindh by our correspondent Sally Sara.
Sally what's happening as far as what you've been able to see today?
SALLY SARA: We've been out again this morning Mark. The skies are quite overcast here this morning and there has been some forecasts of rain. Some of the people on the roadsides are now starting to get some pieces of plastic, but there's still many people in the open and if it rains later today our time it will add to the misery for those people.
In Sindh province, as you were saying, there's still many areas that are under threat and the water is still moving. We were out flying with some of the helicopter missions earlier in the week and when you get out into those areas, it really is just an inland sea and people perched on small bits of road which are raised above the flood levels and levy banks and that's it; they are really in the middle of nowhere.
MARK COLVIN: And you said that you'd seen people on the road waiting for shelter but I believe you've also seen people who are trying to head back at least towards where they used to live?
SALLY SARA: There are only a small number of people at this stage would be able to get all the way home but some have packed up form the roadsides here in Sukkur city and are trying to set up camp on the road closer to home. A lot of people are worried about looting at their property and some have got enough money to sustain themselves to move, others are finding it difficult to compete with the many thousands of people here trying to get food in Sukkur so they've decided that they might as well just try and head back to their home area. So only a small number of people at this stage, it's quite early for that.
MARK COLVIN: What kind of houses did they live in? I mean will the floods actually have swept a lot of shacks away?
SALLY SARA: A lot of the farm buildings that we were seeing when we were out on army boats were mud brick and straw so they were already starting to collapse under some of the water. People are not expecting to see much left and when we were out flying over some of the flood zone a few days ago it wasn't as if you could see remnants of towns or houses, in some areas there's just nothing; you can't even see tree tops.
So those places are completely submerged and the speed of the water coming through in a lot of areas, even just outside where I am at the moment, it's still moving very quickly. So for mud brick houses to have water rushing over them, large volumes of water for several weeks, the chances aren't good for a lot of those houses.
MARK COLVIN: Now you've been reporting today on aid including American and presumably Australian aid as well going to places where it probably shouldn't go, in other words Taliban aid agencies. Is there any way of preventing that; should that have been foreseen?
SALLY SARA: Look it's a complicated issue Mark. There's not enough government assistance to go around , there's not enough international assistance to go round, so some of the local Islamic charities, including those that are saying they can trace their funding back to organisations like Jamaat Udawa which was linked to the Mumbai terrorist attacks, they're providing a lot of aid in places like Sukkur city and secure places where people are receiving aid.
So the camp that we visited yesterday, international aid agencies are providing food there because it's well organised, it's a safe place to distribute food rather than doing it in the chaotic areas outside; so it's a difficult thing, those aid agencies are damned if they do and damned if they don't and in some ways that's the only way that the aid effort is working here; that international and local groups are patching and working together because there's no one overall solution that's big enough to cover everyone.
MARK COLVIN: And it's going to be right across Australia on ABC Radio tomorrow it's going to be Aid for Pakistan Day. Can people be fairly sure that quite a lot of their money will be getting through from what you've seen?
SALLY SARA: It depends where that money's going and I guess as a reporter covering the story here it's difficult for me to answer that. But I guess what I can say is that the situation that we've seen on the ground is very serious and areas that we've visited some people have received no help at all and the people that everyone are most worried about are children; the hospital wards here are overflowing with children with diarrhoea and gastro and that's the real danger at the moment.
MARK COLVIN: Sally Sara thank you very much. Sally Sara in Sukkur in Pakistan.
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