Bar Dalori:
Rescuers and residents resumed the search on Tuesday for the survivors as the death toll from five days of stormy rain rose over 350, with the authorities warning that Monsun’s rainfall would continue until the weekend.
Torrential rain over Pakistan’s North has caused floods and landslides that have swept the entire villages away, leaving many residents trapped in the rubble and scores are missing.
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said 356 people were killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a mountainous province of Pakistan’s northwestern borders of Afghanistan, since Thursday night.
Dozen more were killed in the surrounding regions and took the toll in the last five days to almost 400.
Rescuers dug through mud and stones in severely hit the Dalori village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the hope of finding survivors and the bodies of people missing.
Villagers stood watching and praying as the rescuers worked, one day after the search was stopped with more intense rain.
Umar Islam, a 31-year-old worker, struggled to hold back his tears as he talked about his father, who was killed on Monday.
“Our misery is without explanation,” Islam told AFP When neighbors tried to comfort him.
“In a matter of minutes we lost everything we had,” he said.
“Our lives are ruined.”
Fazal Akbar, 37, another villager, described the demand for the floods as “scary”.
“It suddenly happened that no one once had a minute to respond. Messages were made from the mosque, and the villagers rushed to start saving themselves,” Akbar said.
“In less than 20 minutes our village was reduced to ruins.”
Many roads have been damaged, making it difficult for rescuers to reach areas damaged by the floods.
Communication also remains difficult, with telephone networks hit in flooded areas.
Heavy rain also began to fall on Tuesday in southern parts of Pakistan, which had hitherto been spared the worst of the monsoon rainfall.
Amir Hyder Laghari, head of meteorologist in the southern Sindh province, said he feared flooding cities in large cities such as Financial Capital Karachi “due to weak infrastructure”.
As Karachi’s crumbling pipes and sewer system struggled to tackle the rainfall, the rush season was caught in rising waters and several neighborhoods were hit with power outages.
It has also counted in 15 districts in the nearby Balochistan province, and the most important highway connecting it with Sindh has been blocked of heavy vehicles, said the provincial disaster’s official Muhammad Younis.
Between 40 and 50 houses had been damaged in two districts, he said.
The rain was expected to continue until Saturday, and “Another magic form is to start at the end of the month,” said NDMA chairman Lieutenant Inam Haider Malik.
More than 700 people have been killed in the monsoon rains since June 26, NDMA said, with almost 1,000 wounded. The monsoon is expected to last until mid -September.
Landslides and flash floods are common in the Monsun season, which typically begins in June and lasts until the end of September.
Pakistan is among the world’s most vulnerable countries towards the effects of climate change and is increasingly facing extreme weather events.
Monsoon floods immersed one -third of Pakistan in 2022, resulting in about 1,700 deaths.
