Sukkur, Pakistan: Heavy rains lashed parts of Pakistan on Friday after the government declared a state of emergency to deal with the monsoon. Flooding It said it affected more than four million people.
The annual monsoon is necessary to irrigate crops and refill lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.
The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) on Friday said that over 900 people, including 34, have died in the last 24 hours due to the monsoon rains that started in June this year.
Officials say this year’s floods could be compared to 2010 – the worst on record – when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was submerged.
“I have never in my life seen such a huge flood caused by rain,” old farmer Rahim Baksh Brohi told AFP near Sukkur in southern Sindh province.
Like thousands of others in rural Pakistan, Brohi was seeking shelter along the national highway, as the high roads are among the few dry spots in the endless landscape of water.
The disaster agency said more than 4.2 million people were “affected” by the floods, with nearly 220,000 homes destroyed and more than half a million badly damaged.
The provincial disaster agency said two million acres of cultivated crop had been wiped out in Sindh alone, where many farmers live face-to-face, season-to-season.
“My cotton crop, which was sown on 50 acres of land, is all gone,” Nasrullah Meher told AFP.
“It’s a great loss for me… what can be done?”
Climate Change Minister Sherry Rahman, who on Wednesday called the floods “a catastrophe of epic scale”, said the government had declared a state of emergency, and appealed for international aid.
Pakistan ranks eighth global climate risk indexA list of countries that are considered most vulnerable to extreme weather due to climate change, compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch.
Earlier this year much of the country was reeling under drought and heatwave, with temperatures reaching 51 °C (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad in Sindh province.
The city is now grappling with floods, which have flooded homes and washed away roads and bridges.
In Sukkur, about 75 kilometers (50 mi) away, residents struggled to make their way through muddy roads filled with debris created by the flood.
“If you had come earlier, the water would have been so much higher,” 24-year-old student Aqeel Ahmed told AFP.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif canceled a planned trip to the UK to look after flood responseAnd ordered the army to use every resource for relief work.
“I have seen from the air and the devastation cannot be expressed in words,” he said on state TV after visiting Sukkur.
“Towns, villages and crops have been flooded. I don’t think this level of destruction has happened before.”
A national fundraising appeal has been launched, with Pakistan’s military saying that each commissioned officer will donate a month’s salary to it.
The most affected areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the south and west, but this year almost the whole of Pakistan has been affected.
Images of raging rivers were going viral on social media on Friday, in which buildings and bridges built on their banks in the mountainous north were destroyed.
In the western frontier town of Chaman, adjacent to Afghanistan, travelers had to pass through waist-high water to cross the border after a nearby dam burst, causing flooding due to rain.
The Pakistan Railways said it had lost contact with Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, and suspended train services after an important bridge was damaged by floods.
Most mobile networks and internet services were shut down in the province, with the country’s telecommunications authority calling it “unprecedented”.
The annual monsoon is necessary to irrigate crops and refill lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.
The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) on Friday said that over 900 people, including 34, have died in the last 24 hours due to the monsoon rains that started in June this year.
Officials say this year’s floods could be compared to 2010 – the worst on record – when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was submerged.
“I have never in my life seen such a huge flood caused by rain,” old farmer Rahim Baksh Brohi told AFP near Sukkur in southern Sindh province.
Like thousands of others in rural Pakistan, Brohi was seeking shelter along the national highway, as the high roads are among the few dry spots in the endless landscape of water.
The disaster agency said more than 4.2 million people were “affected” by the floods, with nearly 220,000 homes destroyed and more than half a million badly damaged.
The provincial disaster agency said two million acres of cultivated crop had been wiped out in Sindh alone, where many farmers live face-to-face, season-to-season.
“My cotton crop, which was sown on 50 acres of land, is all gone,” Nasrullah Meher told AFP.
“It’s a great loss for me… what can be done?”
Climate Change Minister Sherry Rahman, who on Wednesday called the floods “a catastrophe of epic scale”, said the government had declared a state of emergency, and appealed for international aid.
Pakistan ranks eighth global climate risk indexA list of countries that are considered most vulnerable to extreme weather due to climate change, compiled by environmental NGO Germanwatch.
Earlier this year much of the country was reeling under drought and heatwave, with temperatures reaching 51 °C (124 Fahrenheit) in Jacobabad in Sindh province.
The city is now grappling with floods, which have flooded homes and washed away roads and bridges.
In Sukkur, about 75 kilometers (50 mi) away, residents struggled to make their way through muddy roads filled with debris created by the flood.
“If you had come earlier, the water would have been so much higher,” 24-year-old student Aqeel Ahmed told AFP.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif canceled a planned trip to the UK to look after flood responseAnd ordered the army to use every resource for relief work.
“I have seen from the air and the devastation cannot be expressed in words,” he said on state TV after visiting Sukkur.
“Towns, villages and crops have been flooded. I don’t think this level of destruction has happened before.”
A national fundraising appeal has been launched, with Pakistan’s military saying that each commissioned officer will donate a month’s salary to it.
The most affected areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the south and west, but this year almost the whole of Pakistan has been affected.
Images of raging rivers were going viral on social media on Friday, in which buildings and bridges built on their banks in the mountainous north were destroyed.
In the western frontier town of Chaman, adjacent to Afghanistan, travelers had to pass through waist-high water to cross the border after a nearby dam burst, causing flooding due to rain.
The Pakistan Railways said it had lost contact with Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, and suspended train services after an important bridge was damaged by floods.
Most mobile networks and internet services were shut down in the province, with the country’s telecommunications authority calling it “unprecedented”.