A month after torrential monsoon rains triggered Pakistan’s worst natural disaster on record, flood waters are starting to recede, but leaving countless survivors at risk of death from hunger and disease.
The disaster has killed at least 1,643 people, forced more than 6 million from their homes, inflicted billions of dollars of damage to infrastructure and the vital agriculture sector and stirred anger against the government that has struggled to cope.
Despite generally lower water levels, officials said they were still battling to save the delta town of Thatta, 70km east of Karachi, in the southern province of Sindh.
Water has broken the banks of the Indus near Thatta and also topped a feeder canal running off the river.
“Thatta will be inundated if this water does not flow into the sea. The situation is very critical,” Sindh relief commissioner Riaz Ahmed Soomro said. “We are trying to fill in breaches and strengthen embankments to save Thatta.”
Soomro said about 95 percent of the delta town’s 300,000 residents had already fled.
“Only male members of the families have stayed back to save their property. Children, women and old people, all of them have left Thatta,” Soomro said.
The floods began late last month after torrential monsoon downpours over the upper Indus basin in northwest Pakistan.
Weather officials said water levels were receding on most rivers and they expected no rain in the coming few days.
“We believe that it will take another 10 to 12 days for rivers in Sindh to come to normal flow. Therefore, we still need to be watchful,” said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the government’s top weather official.
The death toll was expected to rise significantly as the bodies of the many missing people are found.
The UN said aid workers were increasingly worried about disease and hunger — especially among children — in areas where even before the disaster acute malnutrition was high.
UN officials say an estimated 72,000 children, affected by severe malnutrition in flood-affected areas, are at high risk of dying.
Even before the floods, Pakistan’s economy was fragile. Growth, forecast at 4.5 percent this fiscal year, is now predicted at anything between zero and 3 percent.
The floods have damaged at least 3.2 million hectares — about 14 percent of Pakistan’s cultivated land — the UN food agency said.
The total cost in crop damages is believed to be about 245 billion rupees (US$2.86 billion.)
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS