Rescuers were racing against time to find survivors after flash floods killed at least 337 people in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The northwestern province was struck by cloudbursts and torrential monsoon downpours on Friday, triggering flash floods and landslides in the mountainous Buner district.
Nearly 150 people were still missing, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Disaster Management Authority said on Sunday, and five army helicopters had been deployed to help find them.
Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply anguished by the devastation caused by cloudbursts and flash floods”.
“The government is mobilising all resources for rescue and relief operations,” he added in a post on X.
Mohammad Suhail, a spokesperson for the emergency service, said 54 bodies had been found in Buner so far.
The provincial government declared an emergency in the districts of Buner, Swat, Shangla, Mansehra, Torghar, Bajaur, Upper Dir, Lower Dir and Battagram, the Dawn reported. The state of emergency will remain in place until 31 August.
Authorities warned of more deluges and possible landslides until Tuesday as higher-than-normal monsoon rains continued to lash the country.
The rains have killed at least 657 people across the South Asian country since 26 June, according to official data.
Emergency crews were using heavy machinery on Sunday to clear the debris of collapsed homes after families reported that some of their relatives were missing.
At least 24 people from one family died in the village of Qadar Nagar after floodwaters swept through their home on the eve of a wedding.
The head of the family, Umar Khan, said he survived because he was out of the house at the time. He said at least four of his relatives were yet to be found.
Government criticised for late warning
People in Buner accused authorities of failing to alert them after intense rainfall and cloudbursts triggered flooding and landslides. There was no warning broadcast from mosque loudspeakers, a traditional method in remote areas.
The government said that while an early warning system was in place, the sudden downpour in Buner was so intense that the deluge struck before residents could be alerted.
Lt Gen Inam Haider, chair of the National Disaster Management Authority, told a news conference that Pakistan was experiencing shifting weather patterns because of climate change.
Since the monsoon season began in June, the country had received 50 per cent more rainfall than in the same period last year, he added.
He warned that heavy rainfall was forecast to continue through the month.
Idrees Mahsud, a disaster management official, said Pakistan’s early warning system used satellite imagery and meteorological data to send alerts to local authorities. These were then shared through the media and community leaders. He said monsoon rains that once only swelled rivers now also triggered urban flooding.
Saqib Hassan, 50, a local businessman, told the Associated Press that a last-minute announcement from a nearby mosque was the only warning they got to evacuate their homes in the small town of Sarwarabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“We are homeless now. Our houses have been destroyed. All the government has given us is food rations and seven tents, where we’ve been living for the past two weeks,” he said.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres expressed his “deep sorrow at the lives tragically lost due to the recent flash floods in India and Pakistan”.
“The UN Country Teams are at the disposal of government to provide necessary assistance,” his office said.
Pakistan is highly vulnerable to natural disasters. In 2022, a record-breaking monsoon killed nearly 1,700 people and destroyed millions of homes.
A study by the World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists studying global warming’s role in extreme weather, found that rainfall from 24 June to 23 July in the South Asian country was 10-15 per cent heavier because of climate change.
Khalid Khan, a weather expert, said Pakistan produced less than 1 per cent of planet-warming emissions but faced heatwaves, heavy rains, glacial outburst floods and now cloudbursts, underscoring how climate change was devastating communities.
