More than 1,100 people have been killed in flooding described by Pakistan PM Shebaz Sharif as worst in country’s history
New satellite images show the extent of the devastation caused by catastrophic flooding and rains in Pakistan.
The images, from Planet Labs and Maxar, show swaths of green fields, villages and buildings before monsoonal rains and flooding began lashing the country in June.
Continue reading...Sharif’s climate change minister called the flooding a ‘climate catastrophe’ and said the south Asian nation was ‘paying the price’ for western use of fossil fuels
Pakistan is not to blame for a climate crisis-fuelled disaster that has flooded much of the country, the prime minister has said, as he made a desperate plea for international help in what he said was the “toughest moment” in the nation’s history.
“We are suffering from it but it is not our fault at all,” Shehbaz Sharif told journalists on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference where his climate change minister referred to the flooding as a “climate catastrophe”.
Continue reading...Call for emergency funding as nearly half a million people displaced and estimated $10bn damage to economy
The United Nations and Pakistan are to appeal for $160m (£135m) in emergency funding for the nearly half a million people displaced by record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,150 people since mid-June.
Large areas remain underwater and more than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, have been affected by the floods. Rescuers have been evacuating stranded people to safer ground.
Continue reading...The climate crisis is the prime suspect, but the vulnerability of poor citizens and other factors are important too
The climate crisis is the prime suspect for the devastating scale of flooding in Pakistan, which has killed more than 1,000 people and affected 30 million. But the catastrophe, still unfolding, is most likely the result of a lethal combination of factors including the vulnerability of poor citizens, steep mountainous slopes in some regions, the unexpected destruction of embankments and dams, and some natural climate variation.
The horrific scale of the floods are not in doubt. “We are witnessing the worst flooding in the history of the country,” said Dr Fahad Saeed, a climate scientist with the Climate Analytics group, who is based in Islamabad.
Continue reading...PM vows government will not disappoint flood victims as economic losses estimated at more than $10bn
There are growing fears for people living in communities in Pakistan cut off by devastating flooding caused by unusually strong monsoon rains, as damage to major roads hampers the military-led relief effort.
On a visit to a badly flooded area in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday, the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, described the rains as “unprecedented in the last 30 years”. “I have never seen such devastation in my life,” he said, vowing that his government “won’t disappoint” flood victims.
Continue reading...Foreign minister urges countries and IMF to help stricken country after climate change minister speaks of climate ‘catastrophe’
Pakistan’s government has appealed for international help to tackle a flooding emergency that has killed more than 1,000 people and threatens to leave a third of the country – an area roughly the size of Britain – underwater.
Foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Sunday night that floods brought on by weeks of extreme monsoonal rainfall and melting glaciers would worsen Pakistan’s already dire economic situation and that financial aid was needed.
Continue reading...Lack of activity has confounded forecasts so far but a cluster of thunderstorms could change that
The Atlantic hurricane season has so far confounded forecasts of an active year, with only three named storms so far, none of which were hurricane strength. In fact, until now this August joins 1997 and 1961 in having no named storms.
However, there are three months left of the season and activity is starting to stir in the tropics. A cluster of thunderstorms in the central Atlantic has the potential to organise sufficiently to become the first named storm since Colin in early July. Should this occur, it may move westwards and approach the Leeward Islands, bringing the threat of heavy rainfall towards the end of this week, but there is little suggestion it will develop into a significant storm at this stage.
Continue reading...With their homes destroyed by worst flooding in living memory, people in Jaffarabad appeal for help
In the midst of swamps of flood water, hundreds of people who fled one of the worst-hit districts of Pakistan pitched tents on the only high ground they could find – on the raised banks of the Saifullah Magsi canal.
They had left the Jaffarabad region of Pakistan’s impoverished Balochistan province as a monsoon deluge that authorities say has claimed more than 1,000 lives since June swept away their homes and livelihoods. The Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, visiting Jaffarabad on Sunday, was told that at least 75% of Balochistan, which covers half of Pakistan’s land area, was partially or completely affected by flooding.
Continue reading...Flash flooding from ‘monster monsoon’ washes away villages and crops and leaves thousands homeless
A Pakistani minister has called the country’s deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe” and “a climate dystopia at our doorstep” as officials said deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan had passed 1,000 since mid-June.
Flash floods, which have intensified in recent days, have swept away villages, roads, bridges, people, livestock and crops across all four provinces. Pakistan has appealed for international help as soldiers and rescue workers have evacuated stranded people to relief camps and provided food to thousands of displaced people.
Continue reading...More than 33 million people have been displaced as destructive monsoon rains continue to wreak havoc
Flash floods triggered by destructive monsoon rains across much of Pakistan have killed more than 1,000 people and injured and displaced thousands more since June, officials have said.
The new death toll came a day after the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, asked for international help in battling deadly flood damage. More than 33 million people have been displaced.
Continue reading...Authorities say more than 900 killed and 220,000 homes destroyed in worst monsoon rains disaster for a decade
Heavy rain has pounded large areas of Pakistan as the government declared an emergency to deal with monsoon flooding it said had affected more than 30 million people.
The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction.
Continue reading...Police barred until 1 September from arresting former PM, whose supporters gathered outside court
A Pakistani court has barred officers from arresting the former prime minister Imran Khan until the end of the month, according to officials, after police filed terrorism charges against him.
The court protected Khan, the leader of Pakistan’s opposition, from arrest until 1 September over accusations that during a speech at the weekend, he threatened police officers and a judge.
Continue reading...India previously blamed a ‘technical malfunction’ for accidental firing of unarmed missile in March
The Indian air force has said it has sacked three officers for accidentally firing a missile into Pakistan in March.
“A court of inquiry, set up to establish the facts of the case, including fixing responsibility for the incident, found that deviation from the standard operating procedures by three officers led to the accidental firing of the missile,” the air force said.
Continue reading...Khan is reportedly accused of making threats to the country’s judiciary and police force
Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has been charged under anti-terrorism legislation after he gave a fiery speech to supporters at the weekend in which he vowed to sue police officers and a female judge and alleged a close aide had been tortured after his arrest.
Khan will have to “face the law for threatening and hurling abuses”, tweeted the interior minister, Rana Sanaullah.
Continue reading...Lawyers say the woman, who is in hiding in Pakistan with her son, will be killed if sent back to Afghanistan
A female former senior judge from Afghanistan who is in hiding from the Taliban with her son has filed an appeal to the Home Office after her application to enter the UK was denied.
Lawyers for the woman – who is named as “Y” – said on Saturday they had submitted an appeal on behalf of their client and her son at the Immigration Tribunal, saying she had been left in a “gravely vulnerable position” by the withdrawal of British and other western troops.
Continue reading...In a wide-ranging Guardian interview, the former prime minister says he understands anger The Satanic Verses created ‘but you can’t justify what happened’
Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has condemned the attack on Salman Rushdie, describing it as “terrible” and “sad”, and saying that while the anger of the Islamic world at Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses was understandable, it could not justify the assault.
Khan also said he expected Afghan women to “assert their rights” in the face of Taliban restrictions in a Guardian interview in which he sought to moderate his reputation as a firebrand. He is fighting for his political survival after being ousted from office in April. Khan says his staff and followers are being persecuted and intimidated and he is battling eight-year-old charges of illicit campaign financing that could lead to him being banned from politics.
Continue reading...Government accused of inaction as downpours leave schools destroyed, homes ruined, crops failing and cholera on the rise
More than 580 people have died and thousands have lost their homes across Pakistan as torrential rains batter the country.
An estimated 1 million have been affected by heavy rainfall, flash floods and landslides since July as Pakistan endured more than 60% of its normal total monsoon rainfall in three weeks.
Continue reading...Impact of ‘traumatic period’ still lingers with those now based in UK – and their families – 75 years on
After living in Britain for nearly half a century, Pabitra Ghosh is still gripped by a rootlessness borne after being displaced from modern-day Bangladesh as a child.
When a communal riot broke out in 1950, Ghosh, then five, fled with his family across the newly carved Indian border from East Pakistan. The train journey was both “bedlam” and “traumatic” as they abandoned their home to start afresh in Kolkata.
Continue reading...Chance encounter on Facebook led Reena Varma, 90, to visit family home she was forced to abandon in 1947
For decades, Reena Varma would return to her home in Rawalpindi in her dreams. She would wander down the narrow lane to the three-storey house and walk through the rooms where she had lived with her five siblings, parents and an aunt for the first 15 years of her life.
But for 75 years, this was a home located across a seemingly impenetrable national border, one Varma could only visit as a painful memory. That was, until July this year. Now 90 years old but still sprightly, a chance encounter on a Facebook group helped her find and visit the family home she was forced to abandon 75 years ago, located in what is now Pakistan.
Continue reading...Social media is helping long-lost relatives discover each other after a lifetime separated by the India-Pakistan border
It was an embrace that held 74 years of pain and longing. As Sikka Khan, 75, fell into the arms of his older brother Sadiq Khan, now in his 80s, the pair wept with simultaneous sorrow and joy. More than seven decades had passed since the brothers, torn apart by the horrors of partition, had seen each other. With Sikka in India and Sadiq in Pakistan, neither knew if the other was alive. Yet both had never stopped looking.
But on a crisp January afternoon this year, the pair were reunited along the border that had so devastatingly fractured their family. “Finally, we are together,” Sadiq told his brother, tears streaming down his face.
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