Flash floods kill scores in Pakistan
Published: Jul 29, 2010 23:10 Updated: Jul 29, 2010 23:10
ISLAMABAD: Flash floods and storm left dozens of people dead and thousands stranded in the most severe deluge in decades in northwest Pakistan, sources said.
Rivers burst their banks during monsoon rains, washing away streets, battering a dam and killing at least 60 people, officials said on Thursday. Hundreds of thousands more were stranded as rescue workers struggled to reach far-flung villages.
About 150 people have been killed by flashfloods and bad weather in Pakistan in the last week, with the country’s northwest and Balochistan provinces bearing the brunt of the storms, officials said on Thursday.
In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in the northwest, storms and flash floods caused by heavy monsoon rains killed nearly 80 people and left several thousands stranded.
About 70 people were killed in flash floods in the southwestern Balochistan province last week, which also uprooted nearly 100,000 people. Most of the most recent casualties were in the picturesque Swat Valley in Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa province where torrential rains caused the Swat River to burst its bank.
“The river wreaked havoc in Behrain town, where rising water from the river washed away many houses and hotels around the river bank,” a flood control official, Naeem Akhtar, said.
Akhtar said 28 people have been killed in the past 24 hours by flooding across Swat while another 21 were killed by lightning and collapsed houses in the Shangla town on Thursday. Bad weather was likely also a factor in Wednesday’s crash of AirBlue flight 202 in Islamabad, which killed 152 people.
Several thousand people in Swat and other parts of the provinces were either stranded or forced from their homes, officials said. Troops evacuated about 300 people from a village encircled by floodwaters in the district of Tank.
Hundreds of thousands were stranded as rescue workers struggled to reach far-flung villages.
In the Peshawar area, two elderly men clung to a fence post and each other as a raging torrent swept over their heads, footage on Pakistan’s Dunya TV showed. It was unclear whether they survived.
People were forced to trudge through knee-deep water in some streets in the Swat Valley. A newly constructed part of a dam in the Charsadda district collapsed, while crops were soaked in many areas. At least 10 people died near Peshawar when their homes collapsed.
Dozens of people were reported missing, including at least nine Chinese construction workers in the Kohistan area. Some 200 other Chinese workers were trapped amid the downpour, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa.
He said it was the worst floods in the northwest since 1929 and estimated 400,000 people were stranded around the northwest.
“A rescue operation using helicopters cannot be conducted due to the bad weather, while there are only 48 rescue boats available for rescue,” he said, noting weather forecasts predict more rain over the next day.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province received between 250 mm and 300 mm of rain in the past 36 hours - the highest figure recorded in the last 35 years, Pakistan’s Meteorological Department Commissioner Qamar Zaman said.
“We expect more rains in the next 24 hours focused on Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, but by tomorrow afternoon the intensity will go away.”
— With input from agencies
