By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: More than 30 people, including 18 children, have died in rain-related incidents across Pakistan during the days of heavy downpours that have also damaged hundreds of homes and disrupted transportation, officials and local media reported on Sunday.
The worst-hit region was the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 26 people were killed and 37 were injured as a result of collapsed buildings, landslides and electrocution, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority.
Taimur Ali Khan, the spokesperson for the authority, said that the rainfall had been continuous for the past four days and had affected several districts in the province.
“As a result of continuous rainfall over the past four days in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a total of 27 individuals have lost their lives,” Khan said. “One more person was killed in a landslide and more than 150 houses were also damaged.”
In the southern province of Balochistan, five people were killed and one was injured when mud houses collapsed on Thursday and Friday, said Jahanzain Khan, the head of the provincial disaster management agency.
He said that the heavy rain had also caused floods and landslides that had cut off many villages from the main towns and damaged roads and bridges. “We have dispatched relief teams and supplies to the affected areas, but some of them are still inaccessible due to the bad weather and road conditions.”
The authorities in Balochistan have also closed all schools in the province until Thursday as a precautionary measure.
In the northern region of Gilgit-Baltistan, the rain and snowfall had blocked several major roads, hampering the movement of people and goods, local media reported.
The National Disaster Management Authority, the federal agency responsible for coordinating the response to natural disasters, said in a report on Sunday that the death toll from the rains and snowfall had reached 29, while 39 people had been injured and 410 houses had been damaged across the country.
As per the Losses and Damages report by the NDMA, the highest number of casualties from February 27 to March 2 occurred in KP, 21, followed by Balochistan, 5, while three were killed in Azad Kashmir.
KP also reported the highest number of injured, 37, while one person was injured in Azad Kashmir and Balochistan each due to heavy rains and snowfall in the same time period.
“Khyber Pakhtunkhwa deaths/injuries were reported from Districts Mardan, Peshawar, Charsadda, Bajaur, Malakand, Lower Dir, Lakki Marwat, Khyber, Swat and Bannu.”
The report said that 237 houses were damaged in Balochistan, 126 in KP and 47 in Azad Kashmir.
The authority had forecast more rainfall and snowfall in the coming days in various parts of the country, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan and Punjab.
“The next heavy western rainfall spell is projected from 5-7 March [in] KP, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan, upper and southern Punjab and Balochistan,” NDMA said.
Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, despite its low contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Its geographical location exposes it to a range of climate change risks, including glacial melt, sea-level rise, heatwaves and extreme weather events such as the devastating monsoon floods in 2022 that killed more than 1,800 people and displaced millions.
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