Floods have affected 33 million people in Pakistan, resulting in 1,456 injuries and 982 fatalities. The Shehbaz Sharif administration has turned to the Pakistan Army for assistance in relief and rescue efforts. According to Pakistan’s disaster management agency, more than 3,000 km of roads, roughly 150 bridges, and nearly seven lakh homes have been washed away or destroyed as a result of the flooding.
“At present, more than half of (the country) is under water and millions of people have been rendered homeless as a result of flash flooding generated by abnormal monsoon rains,” wrote Pakistani news website Dawn on Saturday morning.
Over 5.7 million people are also without food and shelter as a result of unprecedented rains.
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and Sindh provinces, where heavy rain has continued for a second day in a row and cut off areas due to damaged roads and bridges, have experienced a “fresh wave of death and destruction,” according to The Tribune.
Crops and livestock are also damaged as part of the destruction.
According to the Press, Sindh and Balochistan have been particularly hard hit, and several locations along these regions’ railway lines have seen operations halted.
Due to bad weather, Pakistan International Airlines cancelled all of its Friday flights to Quetta, the capital of the Balochistan province.
According to news agency ANI, the Pakistani government has declared a “national emergency” and will now make a “flash appeal” to the UN. There has already been $3 million set aside for the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.
The Tribune added that heavy rain warnings are still in effect as of Tuesday, August 30. The following week is expected to see more rain.
The disaster has been most devastating in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. Pakistan Railway has suspended some operations, and Pakistan International Airlines has suspended flights to Quetta, the capital of the Balochistan province.
According to the Dawn, Quetta and its surroundings are still underwater after a 36-hour rainstorm put an end to life as we know it and caused hundreds of families to lose their homes.
Because authorities were unable to repair pipelines that were washed away by floods in the Bolan river, the floods and rains have also contributed to a severe gas shortage.
On Friday, videos of inundated streets and nearly submerged cars first appeared on Twitter. A well-known hotel was seen collapsing in a video of the flooding.