In Punjab province, all three main rivers overflowed concurrently, for the primary time within the nation’s historical past.
Revealed On 30 Aug 2025
Practically half 1,000,000 individuals have been displaced by flooding in jap Pakistan after days of heavy rain swelled rivers, based on rescue officers, who’ve been finishing up an enormous rescue operation because the nation struggles with a monsoon season of devastation.
In accordance with an announcement launched Saturday by the Punjab Catastrophe Administration Authority (PDMA), 835 individuals have died within the monsoon since June 26, with 195 in Punjab province alone.
Three transboundary rivers that minimize by way of Punjab, which borders India, have swollen to exceptionally excessive ranges, affecting greater than 2,300 villages.
The regional Punjab authorities has initiated managed breaches of key flood bunds to divert surging waters from the Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej rivers. All three main rivers overflowed concurrently, for the primary time within the nation’s historical past, based on native media.
Nabeel Javed, the top of the Punjab authorities’s reduction providers, mentioned on Saturday that 481,000 individuals stranded by the floods have been evacuated, together with 405,000 livestock.
General, greater than 1.5 million individuals have been affected by the flooding.
“That is the largest rescue operation in Punjab’s historical past,” Irfan Ali Khan, the top of the province’s catastrophe administration company, mentioned at a information convention.
He mentioned greater than 800 boats and 1,300 rescue personnel had been concerned in evacuating households from affected areas, largely in rural areas close to the banks of the three rivers.
‘No human life left unattended’
The newest spell of monsoon flooding because the begin of the week has killed 30 individuals, Khan mentioned, with a number of hundred left lifeless all through the heavier-than-usual season that started in June.
“No human life is being left unattended. Every kind of rescue efforts are persevering with,” Khan mentioned.
Greater than 500 reduction camps have been set as much as present shelter to households and their livestock.
Farmer Safdar Munir within the metropolis of Kasur mentioned the floods took away his crops and all his belongings.
“So, we’re pulling out our cattle as there isn’t a fodder to feed our livestock. We now have acquired no assist from the federal government,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
Abid, one other farmer, mentioned: “The water got here and destroyed every little thing. It’s with nice issue that I may save my livestock. My farm and crops are all underwater.”
Within the impoverished city of Shahdara, on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Lahore, dozens of households had been gathered in a college after fleeing the rising water of their properties.
Rains continued all through Saturday, together with in Lahore, the nation’s second-largest metropolis, the place a complete housing improvement was half submerged by water.
The Pakistan Meteorological Division (PMD) forecast new rounds of widespread rain, wind and thunderstorms throughout a number of areas.
In mid-August, greater than 400 Pakistanis had been killed in a matter of days by landslides brought on by torrential rains on the opposite aspect of the nation, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near Afghanistan and the one province held by the opposition to the federal authorities.
In 2022, unprecedented monsoon floods submerged a 3rd of Pakistan, with the southern province of Sindh the worst-affected space.
