Officials say flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed nearly 1,000 people and displaced thousands since mid-June:
People wade through a flooded area, in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, on Friday, 26 August 2022.Flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed nearly 1,000 people and injured and displaced thousands more since mid-June.
"I have never seen such huge flooding because of rains in my life," octogenarian farmer Rahim Bakhsh Brohi said near Sukkur, in southern Sindh province. Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by the environmental NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.
Premier Sharif cancelled a planned trip to Britain to oversee the flood response, and ordered the army to throw every resource into relief operations."I have seen from the air and the devastation can't be expressed in words," he said on state TV after visiting Sukkur. The worst-hit areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the south and west, but almost all of Pakistan has suffered this year.