Flash floods from heavy rain washed away villages and crops as soldiers and rescuers evacuated trapped residents to the safety of relief camps and provided food to thousands of displaced Pakistanis. Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority said the death toll since the monsoon season began earlier than normal this year – in mid-June – had reached 1,061 after new deaths were reported in several provinces. Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani senator and the country’s top climate official, said in a video posted on Twitter that Pakistan was experiencing a “serious climate catastrophe, one of the worst in a decade.” “We are currently at ground zero of the extreme weather frontline, in an unrelenting cascade of heatwaves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, floods and now the monster monsoon of the decade wreaking no-Stop havoc across the country,” he said. The on-camera statement was reposted by the country’s ambassador to the European Union. Flooding from the Swat River overnight affected the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where tens of thousands of people – especially in Charsadda and Nowshehra districts – have been evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government buildings. Many have also taken refuge on roadsides, said Kamran Bangash, a spokesman for the provincial government. Bangash said about 180,000 people have been evacuated from Charsanda and 150,000 from villages in the Nusehra district. 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 house in Charsadda was submerged overnight. “Thank God we are safe now on this road well above the flooded area,” he said. “Our crops are gone and our house is destroyed, but I am grateful to Allah that we are alive and I will start life again with my sons.” The unprecedented monsoon season has affected all the four provinces of the country. Nearly 300,000 homes have been destroyed, many roads have become impassable and power outages have been widespread, affecting millions of people. Pope Francis said on Sunday that he wanted to assure his “closeness to the populations of Pakistan affected by floods of catastrophic proportions”. Speaking during a pilgrimage to the Italian city of L’Aquila, which was hit by a deadly earthquake in 2009, Francis said he was praying “for the many victims, for the wounded and the evacuated, and so that international solidarity is immediate and generous.” Rehman told Turkish news agency TRT World that by the time the rains recede, “we could have a quarter or a 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 will need to have climate-resilient crops as well as structures,” he said. In May, Rehman told BBC Newshour that both the north and south of the country were witnessing extreme weather events due to rising temperatures. “Well, in the north, we’re actually just now … experiencing what’s known as glacial lake outburst floods, which we have a lot of because Pakistan is home to the largest number of glaciers outside of the polar region.” The government has deployed soldiers to assist civil authorities in rescue and relief operations across the country. Pakistan’s military also said in a statement that it had airlifted 22 tourists who were trapped in a valley in the north of the country to safety. Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif visited the flood victims in Jafferabad city in Balochistan. He vowed that the government would provide shelter to all those who lost their homes.
Associated Press writers Riaz Khan in Peshawar, Asim Tanveer in Multan, Pakistan and Frances D’Emilio in Rome contributed.
