PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Flash floods and landslides triggered by torrential monsoonal rains have killed more than 320 people in Pakistan in three days and affected at least 300,000, officials said Friday.
Hundreds of homes and thousands of hectares of cultivated land were destroyed in the north-west and Pakistani Kashmir, with the main highway to China reportedly cut off and communities left isolated.
The death toll dwarfed the 152 killed in the country’s passenger-jet crash on Wednesday and capped a week of tragedy in the nuclear-armed nation of 167 million.
Pakistan’s north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where impoverished families live in remote mountain villages, was the worst affected.
“We have so far gathered the figure of 325 deaths due to flash floods in the northwest and [Pakistan-controlled] Kashmir,” Anwer Kazmi, spokesman for Pakistan’s largest charity the Edhi Foundation.
“Our officials have got reports of at least 300 deaths in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province while 25 people died in Kashmir’s capital Muzaffarabad.
“We have not collected the complete figures from some districts and fear the number of casualties is much higher,” said the charity spokesman.
The meteorological department said an “unprecedented” 312 millimeters of rain had fallen in the last 36 hours in the northwest after predicting only scattered showers – AFP
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