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The United Nations (UN) has said that it reviewing security measures of its aid workers involved in flood relief in Pakistan following a warning from a top US official that the Taliban is planning to target foreigners in the country. The UN, however, stressed that it would not be deterred by such threats and would continue to help the Pakistani public while working to reduce the risk. "We will obviously take these threats seriously as we did before, and take appropriate precautions, but we will not be deterred from doing what we believe we need to do which is help the people of Pakistan... who have been affected by the flood," BBC quoted UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, as saying. A top American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, had said that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may attack foreigners participating in relief operations in the Pakistan, as the country struggles to cope with the worst floods in the last 80 years. "According to information available to the US government, Tehrik-e Taliban plans to conduct attacks against foreigners participating in the ongoing flood relief operations in Pakistan," the official had warned. Holmes told media persons in New York that the UN considers the threat as genuine while referring to the TTP's suicide attack on the office of the World Food Program in Islamabad last October in which five foreign staffers were killed. Holmes remarks came just hours after a self-proclaimed TTP spokesman, Azam Tariq, told a foreign news agency that the US and other foreign countries had other unspecified "intentions" while distributing funds among the flood victims. Tariq claimed that relief was not reaching the affected people and that a 'horde' of foreigners was totally unacceptable to the TTP. "When we say something is unacceptable to us one can draw his own conclusion," he warned. Holmes countered the TTP's accusations saying various UN agencies have reached out to almost two million Pakistanis providing emergency food supplies and another 2.5 million with clean drinking water. "Medical treatment has been provided to about three million people, and more than 115,000 tents and 77,000 tarpaulins had been distributed," he added.

UN to review security of foreign aid workers in Pak following Taliban threat