Hundreds of people die in Pakistan after floods, landslides

Officials said on Saturday that floods in North -West Pakistan have killed more than 220 people in the last 48 hours, as the rescue team on Saturday pulled 63 more bodies from the houses flattened by flash floods and landslides.

According to the National Disaster Management Authority, Pakistan has received high-normal monsoon rains this year, triggering floods and mudslides, who have killed more than 540 people since 26 June.

A resident told the AFP that the flash flood felt like the “end of the world” as the ground was shaken with water.

Azizullah said, “I heard a loud noise as the mountain was slipping. I went out and saw the whole area shaking, as it was the end of the world.”

“The ground was shivering due to the force of water, and it felt as if death was staring at me on my face.”

Hundreds of rescue workers are still searching for the remaining people in Banar, one of the several places in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where emergency services spokesperson Mohammad Suhail said torrential rains and cloudbers on Friday caused massive floods. Dozens of houses were swept away.

The first respondents are trying to recover the bodies from the worst hit villages of Pir Baba and Malik Pura, where most were fatal, a Deputy Commissioner Kashif Qayyum said in Banar.

Local police officer Imtiaz Khan, who survived narrowly, said that the flood waters took hundreds of boulders and flatten the houses within minutes.

Khan told the Associated Press, “A stream was swollen near the village of Pir Baba in Baner without any warning. First, we thought it was a normal flash flood, but when the tons of rocks crashed with water, there was a migration to 60 to 70 houses,” Khan said that many bodies were muthelled.

“Our police station was also washed, and if we had not climbed the high land, we would not have survived.”

Rescuers said that they destroyed the large swath of Pir Baba village, destroyed the houses, and the huge rocks were filling the streets as the water started again.

45 -year -old Sultan Syed said, “It was not just flood water, it was also a flood of boulder, which we first saw in our lives.”

53 -year -old Mohammad Khan said that the flood “came so fast that many people could not leave their homes.”

Most of the victims died before reaching the hospital, Mohammad Tariq, a doctor in Baner, said. He said, “Many of the dead were children and men, while women were far away in the hills collecting wooden and grazing cattle,” he said.

Mourning attended the funeral on a large scale on Saturday, while the authorities supplied tents and food items to the flood affected people in Baner.

Local cleric Mufti Fazal said that he led the funeral prayers at several places since Friday morning. “Before yesterday’s floods, the region was stirring with life. Now, there is sorrow and sorrow everywhere.”

School student Suleman Khan lost 25 members of his extended family, saying that he and his brother survived only because they were away from home when the flood collided with his village Kader Nagar.

According to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority, at least 351 people have died in rain-related incidents this week in the northern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan.

About 300 kilometers (about 186 miles) in Indian-controlled Kashmir, rescue team on Saturday injured 60 after the flash floods in Kishtwar district, a remote village of Chocity, after being hit by flash floods two days ago, and injured about 150, about 50, in critical condition.

On Thursday, there was a flood during an annual Hindu pilgrimage in the region. Officers have rescued more than 300 people, while some 4,000 pilgrims have been evacuated for security.

Such cloudbers are rapidly common in the Himalayan regions of India and the northern regions of Pakistan, and experts have said that climate change is a contribution factor.

Pakistani officials said that since Thursday, rescuers have vacated more than 3,500 tourists trapped in flood-hit areas across the country.

Many passengers have ignored government warnings about avoiding weak areas in the north and north -west.

Pakistan saw its worst monsoon season in 2022. It killed over 1,700 people and lost an estimated $ 40 billion.