Torrential monsoon rains have triggered the most severe flooding in Pakistan’s recent history, washing away villages and leaving more than three million children in need of humanitarian assistance and at an increased risk of waterborne diseases, drowning, and malnutrition.
More than 1,100 people, including over 350 children, have lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, while many public health facilities, water systems, and schools have been destroyed or damaged. With no signs of the rain ceasing, the number of affected people is expected to continue to grow.
UNICEF is responding with the Government and partners, helping to deliver safe drinking water; lifesaving medical supplies; therapeutic food supplies; and hygiene kits to children and families also establishing temporary learning centres and supporting the protection and psychosocial wellbeing of children affected by these devastating floods.
Around 33 million people, including approximately 16 million children, have been affected by this year’s heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan, which have brought devastating rains, floods, and landslides. Some major rivers have breached their banks and dams have overflowed, destroying homes, farms and critical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, and public health facilities.
There are reports of significant damage to education infrastructure, with thousands of schools damaged or destroyed. After two years of pandemic school closures in the last few years, children once again risk further disruption to their learning in areas where one-third of girls and boys were already out-of-school before the crisis. Meanwhile, cases of diarrhoea, water-borne diseases, respiratory infections, and skin diseases have already been reported.
The perilous humanitarian situation is expected to worsen in the days and weeks ahead as heavy rains continue in regions already underwater. Many of the hardest-hit areas are amongst the most vulnerable in Pakistan, where children already suffer from high rates of malnutrition and poor access to water and sanitation. Most of the affected districts have seen public health facilities damaged, medicines destroyed by the floods, and many health workers displaced from their homes. The risk of waterborne diseases is high, including cholera.
Climate-related crises will not affect everyone equally. Children will suffer more than adults, with those in the poorest communities bearing the biggest burden. The NDMA said more than two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out; 3,457 kilometres (about 2,200 miles) of roads have been destroyed; and 157 bridges have been washed away.
Over 1,600 have been injured. Over 287,000 houses have been fully, and another 662,000 partially, destroyed.
When disasters hit, children are always among the most vulnerable, said Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF Representative in Pakistan. «These floods have already taken a devastating toll on children and families, and the situation could become even worse. Pakistan›s deadly floods have created a massive 100 km-wide inland lake due to the overflowing Indus River in Sindh Province, satellite images show.
United Nations officials have described it as a «monsoon on steroids» that brought the heaviest rainfall in living memory and flooding that has killed 1,162 people, injured 3,554 and affected 33 million since mid-June, reported CNN.
In both Sindh and Balochistan provinces, rainfall has been 500 percent above average, engulfing entire villages and farmland, razing buildings and wiping out crops.
While mostly dry weather is expected in the region in the coming days, experts say the water will take days to recede. The village of Bhambro is in a poor district of Sindh province, hard-hit by record floods that have destroyed more than a million homes and damaged critical infrastructure, including health facilities, across the country. Bhambro is surrounded by vast stretches of flooded farmland, its streets full of mud and strewn with debris and manure—conditions ripe for outbreaks of malaria, cholera and skin diseases such as scabies.AMID
FLOODS, EXPLOSION AND EARTHQUAKE HIT BALOCHISTAN, ONE DEAD
Amid ongoing floods that have led to widespread devastation across Pakistan, a group of militants detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) on Wednesday at the working site of Pakistan Petroleum Limited, killing one local employee.
The incident took place on the outskirts of Kalat in Balochistan when work was in progress, injuring several other employees. The attack by unidentified men came on a day when a moderate earthquake jolted the district and its surrounding areas, reported Dawn.
According to the officials, the blast took place in the Sheikhri area, on the outskirts of Kalat town, near PPL working site when an improvised explosive device planted at the site went off when work was in progress.
Meanwhile, a moderate intensity earthquake of magnitude 4.7 on the Richter scale hit parts of the Kalat district.
Tremors were felt in Kalat and neighbouring areas, forcing residents to leave their houses, according to Dawn.
So far, no casualties or injuries have been reported so far.
The quake-hit Kalat region in Balochistan is also reeling from floods caused by torrential monsoon rains. The devastating floods have left a third of Pakistan submerged as thousands of roads, houses, electric towers and bridges have been completely damaged.
Several cases of bomb attacks have been reported in Pakistan in recent months.
In 2021, Balochistan was the most turbulent province in 2021, when 170 deaths were recorded in 103 militant attacks. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa saw 162 attacks leaving 180 people killed. In Sindh, 15 militant attacks left 23 dead, while in Punjab, 10 attacks left 10 people dead.