Flood-born: Nothing but mud as mother, infant return home after Pakistan floods

Her mother, Hajira Bibi, flits between checking on the 10-day-old girl -- so young she's yet to be named -- and attempting to clean away the ankle-high mud left behind in her home by the floods that forced her family to shelter on the hard shoulder of a motorway.

"I took her up on the motorway when she was only four days old... she was so small," Bibi told AFP about their weekend evacuation.

"She was sick and her eyes were hurting, suffering from a fever too, my baby was in deep trouble because of the heat."

Similar scenes are playing out across Pakistan following record monsoon rains that have flooded over a third of the country, affecting more than 33 million people.

UNICEF says 16 million children are impacted and 3.4 million are in need of humanitarian support.

Still recovering from the birth, Bibi had to be helped up the steep slope as warnings arrived that the Kabul River was about to burst its banks because of torrential rains further north.

In this village near Charsadda in northwest Pakistan, the sun was scorching when they fled to A-frame tents handed out to families.