ISLAMABAD, 24 July — At least 110 people were killed as the heaviest torrential rains in 100 years washed away a village and lashed major cities in Pakistan yesterday, police and state-run television said. Police said Dadar village in Mansehra district of North West Frontier Province was swept away in a landslide and flash flood, wiping out dozens of homes in an instant.
Pakistan Television (PTV) put the toll at 65 with nine still unaccounted for. It said more than 100 people were injured. More than a kilometer of road had collapsed, making it extremely difficult for relief workers to reach the site, police said. “The area is virtually inaccessible in vehicles and the rescue teams are reaching the troubled area by foot,” officer Afsar Khan at a local police station told reporters.
He said the landslide blocked a river upstream, diverting water into a flash flood which wiped out 48 mud houses in the village. “We have recovered 62 dead bodies and their number may go up,” he said.
Floodwater also caused devastation in the nearby village of Pin Todder where six people died in house collapse, police said. Officials said at least 25 people died as a landslide in Chagharzai village near the northwestern hill resort of Bonir demolished several houses.
Police said three people died in Islamabad while 11 died in nearby Rawalpindi city in rain-related accidents. In Rawalpindi, police said six people were killed due to roof cave-ins while a collapsed wall killed three and trapped 16. Two others died when gushing water from Rawalpindi’s Leh River inundated a slum area, they said.
Witnesses said a man was electrocuted on the outskirts of Islamabad where three people died due to the downpour, which started early yesterday and was described on PTV as the heaviest in 100 years. “Water in several localities was as high as 10 feet (three meters) and we have asked the authorities to provide boats to evacuate people stranded on rooftops,” police officer Shahid Abbasi said.
Rain water also paralyzed telecommunications and disrupted traffic, witnesses said. Weather officials said the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad had received a record 620 millimeters (24.8 inches) of rain since early Monday.
“The monsoon spell is likely to continue over the next 24 hours,” Meteorological Office Director General Qamaruz Zaman said. He said the rain had not affected drought-hit areas of Punjab, Sindh and Balochistan provinces.
An official at the deputy commissioner’s office in Manshera told Reuters by telephone that 25 houses in the village of Dadar were washed away by the flash flood early in the morning.
