Relief workers carried out a massive rescue operation in eastern Pakistan, reporting that nearly half a million people had been displaced by flooding after days of heavy rain had swollen rivers.
More than 2,300 villages have been affected by the swollen transboundary rivers that pass through Punjab province, which borders India.
The Punjab government’s relief services, led by Nabeel Javed, announced on Saturday that 481 000 people had been evacuated along with 405 000 livestock and that 481 000 had been stranded by the floods.
More than 1.5 million people, including those in Lahore, the provincial capital and the second-largest city, have been affected by the flooding overall.
At a press conference, Irfan Ali Khan, the provincial’s director of disaster management, said, “This is the biggest rescue operation in Punjab’s history.”
He claimed that more than 800 boats and 1,300 rescuers were evacuating families from the affected areas, the majority of which were rural areas close to the three rivers.
He claimed that there have been 30 fatalities in the most recent monsoon flooding since the start of the week, with hundreds more still missing throughout the heavier-than-usual season that started in June.
“No one is unattended with their lives,” the statement read. According to Khan, “every kind of rescue effort is still going on.”
Families and their livestock can now find shelter in more than 500 relief camps. Difficulty families gathered in a school in the impoverished town of Shahdara, which is near Lahore, after fleeing their homes’ rising water.
More than 400 Pakistanis were killed in just a few days in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the only province held by the opposition to the federal government, in the course of a matter of days as a result of torrential rain on the other side of the nation.
Source: Aljazeera
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