The number of people dead because of massive floods caused by recorded monsoon across much of Pakistan has reached 1,186 on Thursday, as authorities scrambled to provide relief materials to tens of thousands of affected people.
Monsoon rains have broken all the records in the last three decades, which have affected almost one-third of the nation, including most of the Balochistan and Sindh provinces.
The main body which deals with calamities, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), said that, “So far, 1,186 people have died and 4,896 wounded while 5,063 km of roads damaged, 1,172,549 houses partially or completely destroyed and 733,488 livestock killed.”
From the moment since rescue operations began, the army said that almost 50,000 people have been evacuated.
Meanwhile, Foreign Office spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmed said that more than 33 million people had been affected because of the colossal scale of devastation.
While addressing, he said that Pakistan mounted coordinated rescue and relief operations mobilizing all possible resources but the sheer scale of the casualty stretched our resources as well as capacities to the limit, thus necessitating support from the international community.
Pakistan’s government on Tuesday has teamed up with United Nations to issue a appeal for $160 million to deal with the disaster in the nation that has become the “ground zero” of global warming.
As per the spokesman, “The Flash Appeal launch was well attended by the Member States both in Islamabad and Geneva, Heads of UN agencies in Pakistan, representatives of international organizations, among others. Participated offered condolences and expression of solidarity, and assured continued support for Pakistan.”
He also added that Pakistan faced a “climate-induced calamity as the monsoons were not ordinary, as the UNSG termed the monsoon as steroid.”
