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CatastrophePakistan

Pakistan: Thousands evacuated due to flooding

August 23, 2023

More than 175 people have died in Pakistan in rain-related incidents since the monsoon season began in late June.

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Rescue workers use a boat to evacuate villagers from a flooded area of Bahawalnagar district in Pakistan's Punjab province.
Rescuers have evacuated more than 100,000 people from flood-hit areas of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province in the past three weeks, officials said Wednesday.Image: Rescue 1122 Emergency Department/AP Photo/picture alliance

Around 100,000 people have been evacuated in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province due to flooding, emergency services said on Wednesday.

"We have rescued 100,000 people and transferred them to safer places," Punjab emergency services spokesperson Farooq Ahmad said.

Rescue boats traveled from village to village over the past several days, collecting people forced to wait on the roofs of their homes as the water level rose around them.

Rescue workers help victims of the flood affected area in Pakistan.
Pakistan was devastated by weeks of unprecedented floods last year that inundated nearly one-third of the country,Image: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

Pakistan's chief meteorologist covering floods, Muhammad Aslam, said the river level was at its highest in 35 years.

Punjab's disaster management agency warned that monsoon rains could exacerbate flooding in the coming days.

More than 175 people died in monsoon season

Emergency services reported that more than 175 people have died since the beginning of the monsoon season in late June.

Several hundred villages and thousands of acres of cropland were inundated when the Sutlej River burst its banks on Sunday.

Punjjab's chief minister, Mohsin Naqvi, said monsoon rains had prompted Indian authorities to release reservoir water into the Sutlej, causing flooding downstream into Pakistan.

The Sutlej River is a tributary of the Indus that runs through the Punjab region in India and Pakistan. Under the terms of the Indus Water Treaty that governs the major waterway and its five tributaries, the Sutlej is assigned to New Delhi.

Pakistan is still recovering from devastating floods in 2022 that affected over 33 million people and killed 1,739. They caused $30 billion (€27.6 billion) in damage to the country's economy.

sdi,ai/sms (AFP, AP)

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