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.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Friday that more than 900 people had been killed this year – including 34 in the previous 24 hours – as a result of the monsoon rains that began in June.
Officials say this year’s floods are comparable to 2010 – the worst on record – when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was underwater.
“I have never seen such huge flooding because of rains in my life,” an octogenarian farmer, Rahim Bakhsh Brohi, told Agence France-Presse near Sukkur, in the southern Sindh province.
Like thousands of others in rural Pakistan, Brohi was seeking shelter next to a national highway, as the elevated roads are among the few dry places to be found.
A statement on Friday from the office of the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said 33 million people had been “badly affected” by the flooding, while the country’s disaster agency said nearly 220,000 homes were destroyed and half a million more badly damaged.
The disaster agency for Sindh province said 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of cultivated crops had been wiped out there alone, where many farmers live hand to mouth and season to season.
“My cotton crop that was sown on 50 acres of land is all gone,” Nasrullah Mehar told AFP. “It’s a huge loss for me … What can be done?”
The climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, who on Wednesday called the floods “a catastrophe of epic scale”, said the government had declared an emergency, and appealed for international assistance.
Pakistan is eighth on the Long-term Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by the environmental NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather.
Earlier this year, much of Pakistan was in the grip of a drought and heatwave, with temperatures hitting 51C (124F) in Jacobabad, Sindh province.
The city is grappling with floods that have inundated homes and swept away roads and bridges.
In Sukkur, about 50 miles (75km) away, residents struggled to make their way along muddy streets clogged with flood-borne debris.
“If you had come earlier, the water was this high,” 24-year-old student Aqeel Ahmed told AFP, raising his hand to his chest.
Sharif cancelled a planned trip to the UK in order to oversee the flood response, and ordered the army to throw every resource into relief operations.
“I have seen from the air and the devastation can’t be expressed in words,” he said on state TV after visiting Sukkur.
“The towns, villages and crops are inundated by the water. I don’t think this level of destruction has taken place before.”
A national fundraising appeal has been launched, with Pakistan’s military saying every commissioned officer will donate a month’s salary towards it.
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Almost all of Pakistan has suffered this year, but the worst-hit areas are Balochistan and Sindh in the south and west.
Both provinces have experienced the most disastrous monsoon spell in six decades, respectively recording 522% and 469% more than an average downpour this year.
Heavy rain has washed away people, roads, bridges and livestock. Balochistan’s railway connection has also been suspended with other parts of Pakistan after a major bridge built by the British government in 1885 collapsed in March, about 35 miles (56km) away from the provincial capital, Quetta.
I urge international community to help #Pakistan in one of the worst natural calamities to hit the country. Millions of people are homeless across #Sindh #Balochistan and #SouthPunjab due to floods and in need of tents, packaged food and medicines #FloodsInPakistan pic.twitter.com/1z3iil5bJe
— Mubashir Zaidi (@Xadeejournalist) August 24, 2022
Quetta witnessed heavy rains for more than 24 hours that ended on Friday at 2pm local time. The provincial capital saw the worst flood in last 24 hours and water coming to people’s homes, causing casualties and heavy damages to masses and properties.
The relief and rescue operations are ongoing. Deputy commissioner Shaihak Baloch, leading the relief and rescue operation, told the Guardian from the site: “We are on relief and rescue operations. We have not assessed casualties and damages yet.”
“As Quetta city has a valley, the flood water has come from the nearby mountains and unprecedented rain in the city has brought urban flooding. We are working hard to rescue people.
“We are witnessing the worst flood in Balochistan and many parts of the province have become inaccessible due to destruction of roads and bridges.”
Images were circulating on social media on Friday of swollen rivers obliterating buildings and bridges along their banks in the mountainous north.
Junaid Khan, deputy commissioner of Swat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP that 14 riverside hotels had been swept away, along with two small hyrdopower stations.
In Chaman, a western frontier town neighbouring Afghanistan, travellers had to wade through waist-high water to cross the border after a nearby dam burst, adding to the deluge brought by rain.
Pakistan Railways said nearby Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, had been cut off and train services suspended after a key bridge was damaged by a flash flood.
Most mobile networks and internet services were down in the province, with the country’s telecoms authority calling it “unprecedented”.