Pakistan: Five days of flash floods kill hundreds, cause widespread destruction

Thousands of peoples' lives have been devastated by flash floods that have besieged Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir over the last five days. Since June, at least 700 people have been killed across the country.

The floods have swept away entire villages, leaving people trapped under rubble or without homes in the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir in the mountainous north of the country. Many roads have been damaged, making it hard for people to escape or seek refuge elsewhere.

At least 358 people have died in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), with 225 of those deaths coming from the hardest-hit district of Buner, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA). At least 100 people are said to be missing. Families are left to grieve people and places, after the flash floods appeared and disappeared in a matter of hours.

According to data from PDMA, 780 houses were damaged in the province, with 349 completely destroyed and another 431 sustaining partial damage.

In Dalori village in KP, rescuers struggled to excavate bodies among intense intermittent bouts of rain. KP's Chief Minister Muhammad Ali Saif said over $34m had been released for rescue efforts, with 6,000 rescue personnel deployed and over 5,000 people rescued so far.

Umar Islam, a 31-year-old labourer, struggled to hold back his tears as he told AFP about his father, who was killed on Monday. "Our misery is beyond explanation. In a matter of minutes, we lost everything we had," he said wringing his hands as neighbours tried to console him.

Another villager, Fazal Akbar, 37, said the village was "reduced to ruins" in just 20 minutes.

"It happened so suddenly that no one even had a minute to react," he said. "Announcements were made by the mosque, and villagers rushed to begin the rescue themselves."

Death tolls continue to rise as rescuers struggle to reach villages and towns impacted due to continuous rain, causing roads to flood or become damaged, and phone networks being impacted.

Rains spread south

The monsoon season typically arrives in Pakistan between June and September. Heavy rain began falling on Tuesday in Pakistan's south, including the country's largest city of Karachi.

Home to at least 2o million and the country's main commercial hub, Karachi came grinding to a halt as roads flooded. Multiple neighbourhoods were hit with power cuts and traffic was gridlocked for hours at end.

Flight operations at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport was also disrupted.

Chief meteorologist of the Sindh province, Amir Hyder Laghari, told AFP that he was worried large urban cities such as Karachi would not be able to cope with the heavy rain "due to weak infrastructure" such as crumbling pipes and old sewer systems.

At least seven people had died as a result of heavy rain pounding the city.

The rest of the Sindh province and Balochistan have also been badly impacted by flash floods, with between 40 and 50 houses sustaining damage, reports have said. At least 22 people have died in Balochistan from the flooding.

The storms show no sign of abating, with authorities warning flash floods are expected to continue until the weekend, as well as into the end of the month, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) chairman, Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik.

The flash floods are one of the most damaging aspects of Pakistan's monsoon rain reason, but landslides are also a regular feature of the season.

Since the monsoon rains commenced on 26 June this year, the NDMA says more than 700 people have been killed and close to 1,000 injured.

It is the latest tragedy for the country, which is among the world's most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change and has been increasingly facing extreme weather events in recent years.

Monsoon floods submerged one-third of Pakistan in 2022, resulting in approximately 1,700 deaths.