Pakistan ordered the evacuation of 300,000 people from a southern city after waters breached its defences as the UN warned yesterday the country’s worst ever humanitarian crisis was deepening.
For nearly a month, torrential monsoon rain has triggered massive floods steadily moving from north to south, affecting a fifth of the volatile country — an area roughly the size of England — and 17 million people.
“We ordered people of Thatta City on Thursday night to move to safer places after floods breached an embankment at Faqir Jogoth village,” top administration official Manzoor Sheikh said.
At least 70 percent of Thatta’s population of approximately 300,000 people had so far moved to safer areas and the deluge is fast heading toward the city, he said.
“We hope that the [army] engineers will be able to repair the breach or otherwise floodwaters will inundate Thatta City,” Sheikh said.
He said the surrounding towns of Sujawal, Mirpur Bathoro and Darro — which had a combined population of 400,000 — had already been evacuated.
People were fleeing Thatta, where streets were deserted and shops shut, to nearby Makli and Karachi with their livestock and luggage as engineers tried to repair the 6m-wide breach, a reporter on the scene said.
In Makli, which is a hilly area, devastated people were seen sitting out in the open with their children and cattle.
“It is the worst tragedy ... We are leaving our homes in miserable condition,” said Abdul Karim Palejo, a government school teacher in Thatta.
“I leave behind a house, which is more than a century old ... My heart bleeds when I think of this house inundating in floodwaters,” he said.
The catastrophe is Pakistan’s worst humanitarian disaster and has left 8 million dependent on aid for their survival.
The Pakistani government has confirmed 1,600 people dead and 2,366 wounded, but officials warn that millions are at risk from disease and food shortages.
One UN spokesman estimated that in the last 48 hours in the southern province of Sindh alone, 1 million people were displaced.
Flooding has washed away huge swathes of the rich farmland on which Pakistan’s struggling economy depends.
“We can say in Sindh, it is getting from bad to worse,” said Maurizio Giuliano, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Islamabad.
“We are delivering faster and faster, but the floods seem determined to outrun our response,” he said.
The UN has warned that 800,000 people in desperate need of aid had been cut off by the deluge across the country and appealed for more helicopters to deliver supplies to those people reachable only by air.
On the ground, the International Organization for Migration says 4.5 million people remain in urgent need of shelter.
“There are serious concerns about rising malnutrition among children in the affected areas, although estimates are not available now because this is a long-term condition that takes time to develop,” Giuliano said.
“It is estimated that before the floods, 72,000 children aged under five in the affected areas already suffered from severe acute malnutrition — which is deadly,” he said. “This is now likely to be on the rise, due to a vicious circle between disease and malnutirition.”
He said that up to 20 percent of children in the affected areas suffer from diarrheal diseases causing dehydration and enhanced risk of malnutrition.
DEATH TOLL 903: More than 900 workers are believe to be trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of several hydropower projects after flash floods in Nepal-Tibet Rescue teams were working to reach more than 900 people thought to be trapped in the tunnels and underground areas of half a dozen hydropower projects in Nepal following the devastating flash floods, ?the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said yesterday. The death toll from the unprecedented deluge of ice, rock, mud ?and debris that crashed through valleys of Nepal on Wednesday last week has risen to 903 people, with 16 more dead reported on the Tibet side of the border. More than 4,000 are missing in Nepal, with another 500 in Tibet. Hundreds of bodies, many unidentified, have been
Ontario Premier Doug Ford on Saturday answered US President Donald Trump’s “Lake America” decree with a billboard-sized message on the Canadian shoreline — “Lake Ontario. Now and Always” — as Canadian leaders met Trump’s move with ridicule rather than outrage. Wearing a Canada national soccer team jersey, Ford unveiled the sign near Grimsby and posed for photographs. The message is repeated in French. The display followed Trump’s executive order directing US federal agencies to call Lake Ontario “Lake America.” After months of tariffs, threats to make Canada the 51st US state and personal attacks on its leaders, the reaction in
PLENARY SESSION: Although the SCO says it is ‘not an alliance directed against other states,’ Putin and Xi have repeatedly made anti-Western speeches during its summits Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) are expected tomorrow in Kyrgyzstan for a two-day summit, also attended by Iran’s and India’s leaders, of a regional bloc seeking to be a counter-influence to the West. Around a dozen heads of states would head to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, to mark 25 years of the Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO). The group brings together Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, four Central Asian countries and Moscow-allied Belarus. Putin and Xi have previously used SCO summits to promote their vision of a multipolar world and present a united front against the
Dozens of Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked the Palestinian village of Qusra in the northern occupied West Bank after nearly three weeks of tension in the area, drawing rare condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this month, a group of settlers began blocking supplies from entering Palestinian houses on the outskirts of the village near Nablus, trapping residents inside and drawing unusually strong criticism from the US ambassador. Weeks later, Israeli forces continue to operate in the area while settlers still roam the surrounding hills. On Saturday, Qusra residents and dozens of settlers had descended on the village,
RSS