Floods in southeastern Pakistan kill 9

[News_Editor]

Floods in southeastern Pakistan kill 9

2011-09-02 22:29:33 GMT+7 (ICT)

KARACHI, PAKISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Heavy rains in southeastern Pakistan have killed at least nine people during the past few days while hundreds of houses have been damaged or destroyed, local authorities said on Friday.

Most of the deaths were caused by collapsed roofs in separate incidents in Shahdat Kot, Mirpurkhas and Pad Eidan, located in Pakistan's Sindh province, the Express Tribune reported. The report added that dozens of people have also been reported injured while around 700 houses collapsed due to the heavy rainfall.

Roof collapses were also reported in various parts of Pakistan's southern Punjab province. In the Rajanpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalnagar areas of the province, two people were reported killed.

In the Dhani Baksh Sanjrani area of Hyderabad, a 30-feet (9.1-meter) wide breach in a dam of a seasonal stream submerged four villages in flood waters.

Several villages have been facing flash floods as the water levels in Rajanpur, the Qutub Canal, and the River Sutlej continues to rise. Hundreds of crops and farmlands have been destroyed in Rahim Yar Khan, Sadiqabad, Haroonabad and Cholistan.

Despite government officials setting up 96 temporary relief camps which have reportedly been giving shelter to around 20,000 people, a group of demonstrators gathered in the Peeru Lashari area to protest against the lack of government relief aid and food.

Earlier this week, officials said the death toll had risen to at least 60 after rain-triggered flash floods in the Kundian Valley in the Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. The affected area is a mountainous region which is difficult to access, but flooding and landslides have made the area almost completely inaccessible. It took several days before the rescue operation was well underway.

And earlier this month, torrential rains wrecked havoc in most parts of the southeastern province of Sindh, killing at least 18 people and leaving dozens more injured. Some areas saw the worst rainfall since at least 1936.

In late July 2010, above-average heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions killed approximately 2,000 people and affected around 20 million others. It was the country's worst flooding in modern history.

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