A major rescue operation is underway in Pakistan on Monday as international aid began arriving to deal with floods caused by monsoon rains that have claimed more than 1,061 lives.
“Unprecedented in thirty years,” Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said during a tour of hard-hit areas in the north to direct relief operations, as of June.
More than 33 million people have been affected by the floods. The government says about a million homes have been destroyed or damaged.
The authorities continued to try to reach isolated villages in the mountainous regions of the north of the country, raising fears of an increase in the number of victims.
This year, Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman called it the “brutal monsoon of the decade.”
The rains this year are similar to those in 2010, which killed 2,000 people and inundated nearly a fifth of the country.
Pakistani experts attribute these extreme phenomena to climate change and assert that the country is suffering from the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices in other parts of the world.
The government declared a state of emergency and asked the international community for help. On Sunday, the first flights of humanitarian aid arrived from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
These floods are taking place in a very difficult context for Pakistan, whose economy is on the ground and in deep political crisis, after Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in April by a vote of no-confidence in Parliament.
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