Last Month's Great Flood Killed 800 People, Destroyed 95,350 Houses, Pakistan Asks International For Help

Illustration-Flood (Unsplash/Saikiran Kesari)

JAKARTA - Pakistan urges the international community to make efforts to provide assistance. Pakistan is currently battling various problems following last month's massive floods that killed more than 800 people.

Funding and reconstruction efforts will be a challenge for cash-strapped Pakistan. "National rainfall in July was almost 200 percent above average," said Sardar Sarfaraz, a senior official at the metrology office.

"No doubt the province or Islamabad is capable of dealing with a climate catastrophe of this magnitude on its own. Lives at risk, thousands homeless. International partners need to mobilize aid," Sherry Rehman, Federal Minister for Climate Change said in a tweet.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), torrential monsoon rains and floods have affected some 2.3 million people in Pakistan since mid-June, destroying at least 95,350 homes and damaging 224,100 more.

Sindh in the southeast of the country and Balochistan in the southwest are the two most affected provinces. More than 504,000 livestock have been killed, almost all in Balochistan, while damage to nearly 3,000 km of roads and 129 bridges have hampered movement around the flood-affected areas.

The main supply line from the port city of Karachi has been cut off for more than a week after a bridge connecting it to Balochistan was swept away, while dozens of smaller dams in the province were overwhelmed.

"The federal government has also requested assistance from international development partners, so that the reconstruction of flood-damaged infrastructure can begin after the water recedes," Ahsan Iqbal, Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives said in a Twitter post.

In Sindh, the government closed all educational institutions in anticipation of new rain forecasts on Wednesday and Thursday and an airport in Nawabshah district remained closed with an airfield almost completely submerged.

"This is a climate catastrophe of an epic scale, one that poses a humanitarian crisis that can match the magnitude of the massive floods witnessed in 2010," said Rehman.