Pakistan ? Boats and helicopters struggled to reach hundreds of thousands of villagers cut off by floods in northwest Pakistan on Friday as the government said 430 people had been killed in the deadliest such disaster to hit the region since 1929.

The flooding capped an already deadly week in Pakistan, which is no stranger to calamities, natural or otherwise. A passenger jet flying in bad weather slammed into hills overlooking the capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday, killing all 152 people on board.

Three days of heavy monsoonal rains across the northwest caused scores of rivers to burst their banks, tearing down 60 bridges and scores of roads and buildings. Hundreds of villages and towns, along with massive swaths of agricultural land, were under several feet of water.