Pakistan police fire tear gas at cyclone victims Police fired tear gas and bullets in the air to disperse a protest by Pakistani cyclone victims on Friday as rescuers battled more bad weather to get aid to 1.5 million affected people. Around 1,000 people marched towards the local government office in the flood-hit south-western town of Turbat, saying they had received no relief goods since Cyclone Yemyin struck on Friday. "Our homes have been destroyed, there has been no water and no food for the last four days," Ghulam Jan, 27, a farmer from a nearby village, said during the protest. "No government official or agency is helping us. We have no place to go, there is water everywhere," Jan said. Most of Turbat was submerged and people sat on the roofs of their huts and mosques. After days of braving the rain they now faced blazing heat after the clouds finally cleared from over the town near the coast. But helicopters bearing aid were again grounded because of continuing downpours in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, some 550 kilometres to the northwest, where they are based, aid officials said. Khuda Bakhsh Baloch, the Balochistan provincial relief commissioner, said that 1.5 million people were now known to have been affected by the cyclone and subsequent floods. Around 250,000 of them are homeless. "The situation is serious, we know that people are suffering," he said. "The more rain that comes, the worse it gets." 29.6.07