Floods have affected more than one million people in Pakistan, where at least 256 lives have, as AFP reported, been claimed, officials revealed today.
“At least 1,091,807 people were affected in Punjab province and 31,800 in Pakistan-administered Kashmir,” a senior official at the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) told AFP.
The official said the affected people include those who were stranded in their houses or compounds and those who had fled their homes after floods hit their respective areas.
The official said he feared that the figure of affected people might rise.
A statement posted on the authority’s website confirmed the figure.
The floods began in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir last week and have flown downriver into Pakistan’s populous Punjab province.
The waters have swept away homes and destroyed roads and swathes of farmland in a chilling reminder of the damage wrought by 2010 floods, the worst in the country’s history, that killed more than 1,700 people and affected 18 million.
Rescue officials told AFP they evacuated a total of 33,070 flood victims in Punjab province.