Islamabad: Heavy monsoon rains across Pakistan have drowned dozens, with the death toll has now crossed all previously known records.
Torrential rains have knocked down over a dozen bridges in the worst-hit Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province while over 450 villages have been flooded, leaving thousands homeless in central Punjab district of Rajanpur along the River Chenab bank.
There are unconfirmed reports of over 100 deaths in the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province, while 48 are said to have drowned over the past 36 hours in the Punjab province.
Speaking to the Pakistani TV news channels, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar said an estimated 400,000 people have become homeless due to the monsoon rains in Shangla, Tank, Upper, Dir, Alaii, Karak and other districts.
District Coordination Officer Bannu Zahir Shah told a local TV channel that 282 houses have collapsed and hundreds more may meet the same fate over night.
Moreover, a newly-constructed part of Munda dam in the Charsadda district collapsed further worsening the crisis.
On rooftops
TV footage showed families taking refuge on their rooftops, with marginal food and water supplies at their disposal.
"We are sitting under the open sky in heavy rain and flood with no help of relief workers and food supplies," said Allah Yar Malek from the Rajanpur Tehsil, by telephone.
In both, the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and the southern Punjab districts, thousands of acres of crops remain submerged in flowing water.
The historic Grand Trunk Road and Peshawar-Islamabad Motorway has been closed due to heavy flooding and visibility as low as 500-metres.
"Pakistan's terror-hit northwestern province received unprecedented downpour measuring at 300 millimetres over the last 36 to 48 hours," Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, Director General of Pakistan's Metrological Office told Gulf News over the telephone.
Hope in sight
The country's top weather-man forecast the heavy monsoon spell to start weakening in the next 24 hours.
"The continuing rain spell would add 100 to 150 mm of rain in Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa and Punjab regions while certain parts of Balochistan would receive moderate showers," he explained.
According the weather department, entire Pakistan has received 100 to 150 mm of rainfall on average. However, the coastal areas remain clear of the severe wet spell.
"The death toll in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province is enormous ... it is not wrong to say that it is in the hundreds," said Iftikhar, while speaking to Gulf News from Peshawar.
He hoped that relief efforts would be in full swing by this evening.
The weather department, following a standard operating procedure, has already issued warnings to Pakistan Army and Civil Defence stand-by troops.
In the afternoon, a helicopter sortie was flown to assess the impact of the rains and floods.
Residents of Low Dir, which received 260 mm of rain over the past 36 hours, have taken refuge in mosques, schools and government-owned hospitals, with no electricity in many parts of the province.
Warnings
In Rawalpindi, adjoining Islamabad, the district administration made warning announcements in mosques for people living in low-lying areas near Nullah Leh to vacate the area and move to safer places owing heavy rain forecast over night.
"Where can we go without governmental help...it would be better to drown and finish this agonising life once for all," said newspaper hawaker, Aslam Qadri, by telephone from Rawalpindi's dense Gawalmandi settlement.
Water is gushing at high speeds from Pakistan's earlier water-starved Magla Dam causing flooding in low-lying areas of Jhelum and Gujrat districts.
