SUKKUR, Pakistan — Pakistani flood victims, burning straw and waving sticks, blocked a highway on Monday to demand government help as aid agencies warned relief was too slow to arrive for millions without clean water, food and homes. Public anger has grown in the two weeks of floods, highlighting potential political troubles for an unpopular government overwhelmed by the disaster that has killed at least 1,600, made two million homeless and in total has disrupted the lives of at least a tenth of its 170 million people.
Hundreds of villages across Pakistan in an area roughly the size of Italy have been marooned, highways have been cut in half and thousands of homeless people have been forced to set up tarpaulin tents along the side of roads.
"We left our homes with nothing and now we're here with no clothes, no food and our children are living beside the road," said protester Gul Hasan, clutching a large stick.
Hasan, like fellow protesters, has been forced from his village and sought refuge in Sukkur. He and others were camped under tattered plastic in muddy wasteland beside the road.
Dozens of stick-wielding men and a few women tried to block five lanes of traffic outside Sukkur, a major town in the southern province of Sindh. Villagers set fire to straw and threatened to hit approaching cars with sticks.
On Sunday night, hundreds of villagers burned tires and chanted "down with the government" in Punjab province.
