The death toll from three days of flooding in Pakistan reached at least 267 yesterday, rescue and government officials said, as torrential rain bloated rivers, submerged villages and triggered landslides.
The rising toll from the monsoon rains underscores the poor infrastructure in impoverished Pakistan, where under-equipped rescue workers were struggling to reach people stranded in far-flung villages. The weather forecast was mixed, with some areas expected to see reduced rainfall and others much more.
Pakistani TV showed striking images of people clinging to fences and other stationary items as the water at times gushed over their heads.
The northwest appeared to be the hardest hit provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said, noting that it was the worst flooding in the region since 1929.
At least 245 people died in various parts of the province over the last three days, said Mujahid Khan of the Edhi Foundation, a privately run rescue service that operates morgues and ambulances across Pakistan.
In Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, at least 22 people had been confirmed dead as of Thursday evening, the area’s Prime Minister, Sardar Attique Khan said.
The toll from the deluge is expected to rise because many people are still missing.
Poor weather this week may also have contributed to Wednesday’s Airblue plane crash that killed 152 people in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
In the Swat Valley, residents were forced to trudge through knee-deep water in some streets.
A newly constructed part of a dam in Charsadda district collapsed, while the UN said it had reports that 5,000 homes were underwater in that area. Hussain estimated 400,000 people were stranded in various northwest villages.
“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 on Thursday.
Pakistan’s poorest residents are often the ones living in flood-prone areas because they cannot afford safer land.
Southwest Baluchistan province has also been hit hard by the recent rains. Last week, flash floods in that region killed at least 41 people and swept away thousands of homes. The UN statement on Thursday said 150,000 people were affected there.
The UN said Punjab province in Pakistan’s east was also hit by flooding and many crops remained submerged throughout the country. The UN said the humanitarian community was trying to put together a proper response, but the rains were making many roads impassable, complicating efforts to assess needs on the ground.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS