Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said on Sunday the death toll from devastating flooding had reached 1,033 people since mid-June.
More than 100 people have died in the past day alone, officials said, with most of the new casualties reported in the southeastern province of Sindh and northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Further torrents expected in Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa evacuates thousands
Officials warned further torrents of water are expected to reach Sindh in the coming days.
“Right now, [the Indus river] is in high flood,” said Sukkur Barrage supervisor Aziz Soomroo. The barrage redirects water from the Indus to a vast system of canals.
Years of neglect have meant that the barrage’s canals have not been capable of dealing with today’s record volumes.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he had never seen anything like it.
“Village after village has been wiped out. Millions of houses have been destroyed. There has been immense destruction,” Sharif said during a visit to Sindh.
Flooding from the Swat River has affected thousands of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa residents
In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government buildings. The provincial government spokesperson, Kamran Bangash, said that many evacuees have also taken shelter on roadsides.
Local Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa officials cited by Pakistani news portal Dawn said that areas of the province had been “cut off” from the rest of the country, and many residents had been attempting to evacuate by foot, some traveling for days.
A ‘climate catastrophe’
Top climate official Sherry Rehman said that Pakistan is experiencing a “serious climate catastrophe,” adding that this was “one of the hardest in the decade.”
“We are at the moment at the ground zero of the front line of extreme weather events, in an unrelenting cascade of heatwaves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade is wreaking non-stop havoc throughout the country,” she said.
Rehman told Turkish news outlet TRT World that “we could well have one fourth or one third of Pakistan under water” by the time rains subside.
“This is something that is a global crisis and of course we will need better planning and sustainable development on the ground… We’ll need to have climate resilient crops as well as structures,” she said.
International support
Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal told the EFE news agency that “some countries have promised aid that is on its way, but we need more assistance for the millions of people affected by the rains.”
The US, UK, China and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries that have pledged support.
The prime minister’s office said that the first delivery of international assistance occurred at the Noor Khan airbase near Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s capital Rawalpindi, and 15 more planes delivering aid will arrive over the coming days.
Pope Francis asserted his “closeness to the people of Pakistan struck by flooding of disastrous proportions.” He called for international solidarity to be “prompt and generous.”
sdi/fb (AP, AFP, dpa, Lusa, EFE)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-flooding-death-toll-tops-1-000/a-62955961?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf