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Middle East Eye
25 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
Pakistan: Five days of flash floods kill hundreds, cause widespread destruction
Thousands of peoples' lives have been devastated by flash floods that have besieged Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir over the last five days. Since June, at least 700 people have been killed across the country. The floods have swept away entire villages, leaving people trapped under rubble or without homes in the areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir in the mountainous north of the country. Many roads have been damaged, making it hard for people to escape or seek refuge elsewhere. Members of a family sit outside their damaged shop after the Buner district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was hit by a flash flood on 18 August (Abdul Majeed/ AFP) New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters At least 358 people have died in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), with 225 of those deaths coming from the hardest-hit district of Buner, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA). At least 100 people are said to be missing. Families are left to grieve people and places, after the flash floods appeared and disappeared in a matter of hours. According to data from PDMA, 780 houses were damaged in the province, with 349 completely destroyed and another 431 sustaining partial damage. Locals collect wood in the aftermath of a flash flood from Noseri Dam near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, on 16 August (Sajjad Qayyum/ AFP) In Dalori village in KP, rescuers struggled to excavate bodies among intense intermittent bouts of rain. KP's Chief Minister Muhammad Ali Saif said over $34m had been released for rescue efforts, with 6,000 rescue personnel deployed and over 5,000 people rescued so far. Umar Islam, a 31-year-old labourer, struggled to hold back his tears as he told AFP about his father, who was killed on Monday. "Our misery is beyond explanation. In a matter of minutes, we lost everything we had," he said wringing his hands as neighbours tried to console him. Another villager, Fazal Akbar, 37, said the village was "reduced to ruins" in just 20 minutes. "It happened so suddenly that no one even had a minute to react," he said. "Announcements were made by the mosque, and villagers rushed to begin the rescue themselves." Rescue workers try to clear away the rubble of collapsed houses as they search for victims, a day after a flash flood in Dalori village( Aamir QURESHI /AFP) Death tolls continue to rise as rescuers struggle to reach villages and towns impacted due to continuous rain, causing roads to flood or become damaged, and phone networks being impacted. Rains spread south The monsoon season typically arrives in Pakistan between June and September. Heavy rain began falling on Tuesday in Pakistan's south, including the country's largest city of Karachi. People wade through a flooded street after heavy rainfall in Karachi on 19 August (Asif HASSAN / AFP) Home to at least 2o million and the country's main commercial hub, Karachi came grinding to a halt as roads flooded. Multiple neighbourhoods were hit with power cuts and traffic was gridlocked for hours at end. Flight operations at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport was also disrupted. Chief meteorologist of the Sindh province, Amir Hyder Laghari, told AFP that he was worried large urban cities such as Karachi would not be able to cope with the heavy rain "due to weak infrastructure" such as crumbling pipes and old sewer systems. A man takes shelter as a car lies partially submerged in floodwaters along a street after heavy rainfall in Karachi on 19 August (Asif HASSAN / AFP) At least seven people had died as a result of heavy rain pounding the city. The rest of the Sindh province and Balochistan have also been badly impacted by flash floods, with between 40 and 50 houses sustaining damage, reports have said. At least 22 people have died in Balochistan from the flooding. The storms show no sign of abating, with authorities warning flash floods are expected to continue until the weekend, as well as into the end of the month, according to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) chairman, Lieutenant General Inam Haider Malik. The flash floods are one of the most damaging aspects of Pakistan's monsoon rain reason, but landslides are also a regular feature of the season. Since the monsoon rains commenced on 26 June this year, the NDMA says more than 700 people have been killed and close to 1,000 injured. It is the latest tragedy for the country, which is among the world's most vulnerable countries to the impact of climate change and has been increasingly facing extreme weather events in recent years. Monsoon floods submerged one-third of Pakistan in 2022, resulting in approximately 1,700 deaths.
Al Etihad
10 hours ago
- Al Etihad
Wildfires scorch 74,000 more acres in Spain
19 Aug 2025 13:43 Madrid (AFP)Raging wildfires tore through an additional 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of western Spain in less than 24 hours, satellite data showed on Tuesday, but cooler temperatures have raised hopes of 373,000 hectares (922,000 acres) have been scorched in Spain this year as of 0700 GMT Tuesday, according to the European Forest Fire Information marks the country's worst fire season since records began in 2006, surpassing 2022, when 306,000 hectares were consumed by bulk of the devastation has come from massive fires that have been burning for more than a week in the northwestern provinces of Zamora and Leon, Galicia's Ourense province, and Caceres in the western region of have evacuated thousands of residents from dozens of major roads are closed, and rail services between Madrid and Galicia have been Minister Pedro Sánchez was expected to visit fire-hit areas in Zamora and Caceres on officials warned that the blazes remain far from extinguished, the end of a 16-day heatwave has improved conditions for temperatures have dropped by 10 to 12 degrees Celsius and humidity levels have risen, the central government's representative in Castile and Leon, Nicanor Sen, said. "These changes are facilitating and improving the conditions to gain control of the fires," he told public broadcaster TVE.
Al Etihad
2 days ago
- Al Etihad
250 flee as Turkish rescuers battle wildfire in Gallipoli
17 Aug 2025 13:03 ISTANBUL (AFP)More than 250 people were evacuated overnight as a wildfire raged on the Gallipoli peninsula flanking the Dardanelles Strait, where Turkish firefighters were battling Sunday to quench the blaze, officials fire began on Saturday in the northwestern province of Canakkale, and spread quickly due to high winds in the hills near the town of Gelibolu, on the shores of the busy shipping strait."As a precaution, 251 residents from five villages were relocated to safe areas," Canakkale governor Omer Toraman wrote on showed the hillsides illuminated by bright flames while huge clouds of smoke poured into the night said the province, a popular destination for tourists visiting the ancient ruins of Troy, as well as the Gallipoli battleground where thousands of soldiers died in World War I, had suffered "extremely severe drought" over the past the weather has been fairly normal for the time of year, much of northwestern Turkiye has suffered strong winds in recent days, although they eased off on worked through the night, with 12 planes and 18 helicopters rejoining the efforts at first light in an operation involving 900 people, the forestry directorate said on authority in charge of the war memorials said on X that access to historical sites near the town of Eceabat had been closed "due to the ongoing forest fire".On Monday, another fire on the other side of the strait forced 2,000 people to flee, with around 80 treated for smoke days earlier, another fire forced the evacuation of 120 people and the suspension of shipping through the Dardanelles Strait, which links the Mediterranean with the Sea of Marmara and the Black to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 192 wildfires in Turkiye this year, which have ravaged more than 110,373 hectares (273,000 acres) of land. Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters, and have warned Turkiye to take measures to tackle the problem.
