The U.S. military is sending a team to Pakistan to figure out what support the Pentagon could provide amid deadly floods that have covered more than one-third of the country, the Defense Department announced Friday.
U.S. Central Command will send the team to Islamabad to determine how the Pentagon can help the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of Washington’s response to the crisis, the command’s top spokesperson, Col. Joe Buccino, said in a statement.
The commander of CENTCOM, Gen. Michael Kurilla, also spoke with Pakistan's chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, to convey "his sympathies for the people of Pakistan," according to the statement.
Floods that began in mid-June decimated Pakistan, and satellite photographs released this week indicated that more than one-third of the nation was submerged.
The flooding has killed more than 1,100 people — at least 400 of them children — affected more than 33 million people, and destroyed millions of acres of crops and hundreds of thousands of livestock, setting the country up for a significant food shortage and humanitarian crisis.
The floods are being blamed on the worst monsoon season since Pakistan began keeping statistics in 1961, according to CNN.
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