Pakistan raced to evacuate families threatened withfreshfloods yesterday as heavy rains worsened the disaster in its second week, with up to 15 million people already affected.

Authorities in southern Sindh province have warned that a major deluge could hit impoverished river communities in the fertile basin, where they said up to three million people had already been affected and one million evacuated.

Those uprooted from their homes have been moved to temporary relief shelters in government buildings, schools and tents, but many families living in low-lying areas along the swollen Indus river were resisting evacuation.

"There are some areas where people are still reluctant to leave their homes and belongings. We are compelling them to evacuate because there is massive danger to their lives," said irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo.

"The water flow in some places along the river is exceptionally high and intermittent rains continue," he added.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has appealed for immediate international help to cope with the country's worst ever floods, which have already devastated provinces in the country's northwest and centre.

" I would ask the international community to support and help Pakistan alleviate the sufferings of flood-affected people," Gilani said in a televised address to the nation on Friday night.

"Pakistan has been hit by worst floods of its history, "he said.

Countries including the US, Britain and China have pledged tens of millions of dollars in aid for victims of the nearly two-week-old

disaster.

Floods across the largely impoverished, insurgency-hit country have swept away entire villages and killed at least 1,600 people, according to UN estimates.

Bedraggled women, children and elderly men were deposited on the banks of the Indus by rescue boats criss-crossing a giant lake dotted by treetops in the village of Durrani Mehar in northern Sindh.

The meteorological office has warned that at least two more days of rain are expected. A red alert is in place in Sindh, where forecasters warned of an "imminent" and "extreme" flood threat

Torrential rains were also forecast in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the head of flood relief operations, Major General Ghayoor Mehmood, has said some 1,400 people have been killed, with 213 still missing.

Flooding has spread to Indian-held Kashmir, where at least 115 people have died, while large parts of Pakistan's Punjab are also underwater.

"The scale of the needs is absolutely daunting," Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said Friday.

More than 252,000 homes are thought to have been damaged or destroyed across Pakistan and 1.38 million acres (558,000 hectares) of crop land flooded, and it could take weeks before electricity is fully restored.

Authorities in Sindh said assessments of the damage to agriculture were in progress after farmers saw their livelihoods washed away.

"Our cattle died and the cotton crop (was) destroyed," said Mohammad Bakhsh, 50, a resident of Qasim Ghot village.