Keystone-SDA
Rescuers are trying on Saturday to recover the bodies buried in northern Pakistan where an unusually injection monsoon killed more than 320 people in 48 hours.
(Keystone-ATS) In the past two days, the deadliest torrential rains have taken place in various districts in the mountain province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, in the north of the country, which alone recorded 307 deaths, half of the dead of this monsoon season, indicates the disaster management authority.
Most of the victims were swept away by sudden floods, died in the collapse of their house, were electrocuted or struck by lightning.
In this border province of Afghanistan, still struck by intense precipitation, more than 2,000 rescuers are mobilized to try to find survivors, or recover the bodies buried under the rubble, said on Saturday at AFP Bilal Ahmed Faizi, spokesperson for the province. “The heavy rains, the landslides and the blocked roads hinder access to the ambulances and the rescuers must move on foot,” he added.
Rubbing prisoners
Rescue “try to evacuate the survivors, but very little agree to leave because they have lost relatives, still prisoners of the rubble,” continues Mr. Faizi. “This morning, when I woke up, the land that our family had cultivated for generations – and the small land where we have been cricket for years – had disappeared,” said AFP Muhammad Khan, a resident of the Buner district, who has 91 dead.
“It looks like the whole mountain has collapsed, the region is covered with mud and huge rocks,” added the 48 -year -old man, saying that he had extracted “19 bodies from the rubble”. “We continue to search for missing relatives, each time we discover a body, we feel deep sadness but it is also a relief to say that the family can recover the body,” he says.
The Provincial Authority for Management of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has declared “victims” of many districts where “rescue teams have been deployed in reinforcement” to try to approach hamlets with accident geography. Saifullah Khan, a 32 -year -old teacher, assures that the whole district of Buner is in shock.
“Poor quality of structures”
“The inhabitants collect the bodies and organize funeral prayers”, but “we still do not know who is dead or alive,” he says. “I found the bodies of some of my students and I wonder what they did to deserve this.”
Nine other people died in the Pakistani cashmere, while in the cashmere administered by India, at least 60 victims were identified in a Himalayan village – and 80 others are still missing. Finally, five people died in the Gilgit-Baltistan tourist region, in the far north of Pakistan, particularly popular in summer from mountaineers from around the world, but the authorities now recommend to avoid.
In total, since the start of a summer monsoon qualified as an unusual “by the authorities, 634 people, including a hundred children, were killed, and 768 injured. Friday, a helicopter from the rescue crashed, killing five more people.
For Syed Muhammad Tayyab Shah, the national disaster management authority, “more than half of the victims died because of the poor quality of the structures”. The country, the most populous fifth in the world, is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and, warn the authorities, the rains will further intensify for the next two weeks.
The 255 million Pakistanis have already undergone massive and murderous floods in recent years, explosions of glacial lakes and unpublished droughts, as many phenomena that will multiply under the influence of climate change, warn scientists.
