Sindh villagers are trapped due to flooding caused by the overflowing of Pakistan’s largest lake, Manchar. “There is too much water. We are going to drown.” That was the warning from the villagers of Sehta Sehanj, as reported by CNN. Lake Manchar has swelled to an area hundreds of square kilometres wide due to the combined effects of a heavy monsoon and melting glaciers and breached its banks for what was at least the third time on Tuesday, leaving nearby villages under several feet of water.
New satellite images from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel Labs show how the lake has swelled over the past two months into an area covering hundreds of square kilometres following record levels of rain. What were once islands and peninsulas in the lake have disappeared, and surrounding land has been swallowed up, CNN reported CNN.
The satellite images also show that despite the breaches, water levels at the lake remain dangerously high, suggesting there may be more misery to come for nearby villagers. According to CNN, Pakistani authorities are in a desperate race against time to reduce water levels at the lake in Sindh, the country’s second-most populous province, home to nearly 48 million people, fearing that a full-scale breach of the lake’s banks will inundate nearby cities. To avert that scenario, they allowed the lake to overflow twice on Sunday to divert some of the lake’s waters into less densely populated areas. But this has led to flooding in smaller villages that has affected around 135,000 people, Sindh province’s irrigation minister Jam Khan Shoro told CNN on Wednesday.