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 folks have been displaced by flooding in japanese Pakistan after days of heavy rain swelled rivers, in response to rescue officers, who’ve been finishing up an enormous rescue operation because the nation struggles with a monsoon season of devastation.
Based on an announcement launched Saturday by the Punjab Catastrophe Administration Authority (PDMA), 835 folks have died within the monsoon since June 26, with 195 in Punjab province alone.
Three transboundary rivers that minimize by 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, in response to native media.
Nabeel Javed, the top of the Punjab authorities’s reduction companies, stated on Saturday that 481,000 folks stranded by the floods have been evacuated, together with 405,000 livestock.
General, greater than 1.5 million folks have been affected by the flooding.
“That is the most important rescue operation in Punjab’s historical past,” Irfan Ali Khan, the top of the province’s catastrophe administration company, stated at a information convention.
He stated greater than 800 boats and 1,300 rescue personnel have been concerned in evacuating households from affected areas, principally 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 folks, Khan stated, 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. All types of rescue efforts are persevering with,” Khan stated.
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 stated the floods took away his crops and all his belongings.
“So, we’re pulling out our cattle as there is no such thing as a fodder to feed our livestock. We’ve obtained no assist from the federal government,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Abid, one other farmer, stated: “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 have been gathered in a college after fleeing the rising water of their houses.
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 have been killed in a matter of days by landslides attributable to 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.