She also tweeted that 326 children were among the dead. The government is using all available resources to help victims, he said.
Heavy rains and flooding have affected 2.3 million people in Pakistan since mid-June, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
At least 95,350 homes have been destroyed, according to the aid agency. Southeastern Sindh province and southwestern Balochistan province are the two worst-hit provinces in terms of human impact and infrastructure, OCHA wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
More than 504,000 animals have been killed, almost all in Balochistan, while nearly 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of roads and 129 bridges have been damaged, blocking access to flood-affected areas, OCHA writes.
On Wednesday, the government’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said more international funding was needed for flood relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of damaged infrastructure.
Rehman, who was speaking at an NDMA briefing on Wednesday, likened the situation to record floods in 2010, but said much of Balochistan, southern Punjab and 30 districts of Sindh region were facing an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster”.
“People are displaced, livestock and crops have been damaged,” Rehman said.
More heavy rain and flooding are expected, while schools in Balochistan and Sindh have been closed ahead of more monsoon rain expected towards the end of the week.
China announced on Wednesday that it will provide emergency humanitarian aid to Pakistan, according to a tweet from the Chinese embassy in Pakistan. The supplies will include 25,000 tents along with $300,000 in emergency cash to help flood-affected areas in Pakistan, the statement said.
Pakistan gets monsoon rains every year, but nothing has been as bad as the rains this summer, Rehman told CNN. Residents were caught off guard, for example, when 400 millimeters (about 15 inches) of rain fell within hours in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, he said.
“No city is built or adapted or climate-resilient enough to deal with this amount of water in such a short period of time,” he said. “This is a downpour of biblical proportions.”
July was the wettest in three decades, with 133 percent more rain than the 30-year average, the National Disaster Management Authority said earlier in August. Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, received 305 percent more rainfall than the annual average, the disaster agency said.
