BANGALORE, India (CNS) — Church aid workers in Pakistan were trying to reach hundreds of thousands of people displaced and rendered homeless by the rain and floods that had claimed more than 1,200 lives in Pakistan’s mountainous northwestern region. “The biggest challenge before us is how to (get) relief to the needy. Bridges have collapsed and roads have been washed out,” Carolyn Fanelli, CRS acting country representative in Pakistan, told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview Aug. 2. Eric Dayal, national coordinator for disaster management of Caritas Pakistan, said his agency was faced with the same difficulty. “Most of the roads in the affected (area) are gone and even telephone links are broken. With electric supply also disrupted, communication remains a big headache,” he said. Fanelli said CRS was in touch with its 40 staff in the field through satellite phones, even though in the most devastated areas they have had to vacate their offices. Mehmood Senior, a field engineer for CRS in Besham, reported that staffers walked along muddy roads blocked by landslides and had to cross a temporary bridge made of electrical utility poles to reach some of the villages.