Pakistan declares emergency as 33 million people affected by floods

SUKKUR (Pakistan) • Heavy rain pounded much of Pakistan yesterday after the government declared an emergency to deal with monsoon flooding that had affected more than 30 million people.

The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian sub-continent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.

The National Disaster Management Authority said yesterday that more than 900 people had been killed this year - including 34 in the last 24 hours - as a result of the monsoon rains that began in June.

Officials say this year's floods are comparable to those of 2010 - the worst on record - when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.

"I have never seen such huge flooding because of rain in my life," octogenarian farmer Rahim Bakhsh Brohi told Agence France-Presse near Sukkur city, in southern Sindh province.

Like thousands of others in rural Pakistan, Mr Brohi was seeking shelter beside the national highway, as the elevated roads are among the few dry places in the endless landscapes of water.

A statement yesterday from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's office said 33 million people had been "badly affected" by the flooding, while the country's disaster agency said nearly 220,000 homes were destroyed and half a million more badly damaged.

The worst-hit areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the west and south, but almost all of Pakistan has suffered this year.

The provincial disaster agency said that 809,000ha of cultivated crops had been wiped out in Sindh alone, where many farmers live hand-to-mouth, season-to-season.

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman, who on Wednesday called the floods "a catastrophe of epic scale", said the government had declared an emergency, and appealed for international assistance.

Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by environmental non-governmental organisation Germanwatch of countries considered most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change.

Earlier this year, much of the nation was in the grip of a drought and heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51 deg C in Jacobabad city, Sindh.

The city is now grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges.

Mr Sharif cancelled a planned trip to Britain to oversee the flood response, and ordered the army to throw every resource into relief operations.

A national fund-raising appeal has been launched, with Pakistan's military saying every commissioned officer would donate a month's salary towards it.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE