ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan topped 1,000 since mid-June, officials said Sunday, as the country’s climate minister called the deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe.”
Flash flooding from the heavy
rains has washed away villages and crops as soldiers and rescue workers
evacuated stranded residents to the safety of relief camps and provided food to
thousands of displaced Pakistanis.
Pakistan’s National Disaster
Management Authority reported the death toll since the monsoon season began
earlier than normal this year — in mid- June — reached 1,061 people after new
fatalities were reported across different provinces.
Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani
senator and the country’s top climate official, said in a video posted on Twitter
that Pakistan is experiencing a “serious climate catastrophe, 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. The on-camera statement was
retweeted by the country’s ambassador to the European Union.
Flooding from the Swat River
overnight affected northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where tens of
thousands of people — especially in the Charsadda and Nowshehra districts —
have been evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government
buildings. Many have also taken shelter on roadsides, said Kamran Bangash, a
spokesperson for the provincial government.
Bangash said some 180,000
people have been evacuated from Charsadda and 150,000 from Nowshehra district
villages.
Khaista Rehman, 55, no
relation to the climate minister, took shelter with his wife and three children
on the side of the Islamabad-Peshawar highway after his home in Charsadda was
submerged overnight.
“Thank God we are safe now on
this road quite high from the flooded area,” he said. “Our crops are gone and
our home is destroyed but I am grateful to Allah that we are alive and I will
restart life with my sons.”
The unprecedented monsoon
season has affected all four of the country’s provinces. Nearly 300,000 homes
have been destroyed, numerous roads rendered impassable and electricity outages
have been widespread, affecting millions of people.
Pope Francis on Sunday said he
wanted to assure his “closeness to the populations of Pakistan struck by
flooding of disastrous proportions.” Speaking during a pilgrimage to the
Italian town of L’Aquila, which was hit by a deadly earthquake in 2009, Francis
said he was praying “for the many victims, for the injured and the evacuated,
and so that international solidarity will be prompt and generous.”
Rehman told Turkish news
outlet TRT World that by the time the rains recede, “we could well have one
fourth or one third of Pakistan under water.”
“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.
In May, Rehman told BBC
Newshour that both the country’s north and south were witnessing extreme
weather events because of rising temperatures. “So in north actually just now
we are ... experiencing what is known as glacial lake outburst floods which we
have many of because Pakistan is home to the highest number of glaciers outside
the polar region.”
The government has deployed
soldiers to help civilian authorities in rescue and relief operations across
the country. The Pakistani army also said in a statement it airlifted 22
tourists trapped in a valley in the country’s north to safety.
Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif
visited flooding victims in city of Jafferabad in Baluchistan. He vowed the
government would provide housing to all those who lost their homes.
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