Unusually heavy monsoon rains have caused devastating floods in both the north and south of the country, affecting more than 30 million people.
An overview by Maxar shows a Pakistani village and fields before (left) and after flooding in Rajanpur, Pakistan.
(Maxar Technologies/Handout / Reuters)
Deaths from widespread flooding in Pakistan topped 1,000 since mid-June as the country’s climate minister called the deadly monsoon season “a serious climate catastrophe.”
Flash flooding from the heavy rains has washed away villages and crops as soldiers and rescue workers evacuated stranded residents to the safety of relief camps and provided food to thousands of displaced Pakistanis.
Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority reported the death toll since the monsoon season began earlier than normal this year — in mid- June — reached 1,061 people after new fatalities were reported across different provinces on Sunday.
Sherry Rehman, a Pakistani senator and the country's top climate official, said in a video posted on Twitter that Pakistan is experiencing a “serious climate catastrophe, one of the hardest in the decade.”
“We are at the moment at the ground zero of the front line of extreme weather events, in an unrelenting cascade of heatwaves, forest fires, flash floods, multiple glacial lake outbursts, flood events and now the monster monsoon of the decade is wreaking non-stop havoc throughout the country," she said.
The on-camera statement was retweeted by the country’s ambassador to the European Union.
Watch how these incredible Pakistanis are rescuing people during this horrific flood.
"I haven't seen destruction of this scale, I find it very difficult to put into words ... it is overwhelming," said Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in an interview with Reuters, adding many crops that provided much of the population's livelihoods had been wiped out.
"Going forward, I would expect not only the IMF, but the international community and international agencies to truly grasp the level of devastation," he said.
Flooding from the Swat River overnight affected northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where tens of thousands of people — especially in the Charsadda and Nowshehra districts — have been evacuated from their homes to relief camps set up in government buildings.
Many have also taken shelter on roadsides, said Kamran Bangash, a spokesperson for the provincial government.
Bangash said some 180,000 people have been evacuated from Charsadda and 150,000 from Nowshehra district villages.
Khaista Rehman, 55, no relation to the climate minister, took shelter with his wife and three children on the side of the Islamabad-Peshawar highway after his home in Charsadda was submerged overnight.
“Thank God we are safe now on this road quite high from the flooded area," he said. "Our crops are gone and our home is destroyed but I am grateful to Allah that we are alive and I will restart life with my sons.”
The unprecedented monsoon season has affected all four of the country's provinces.
Nearly 300,000 homes have been destroyed, numerous roads rendered impassable and electricity outages have been widespread, affecting millions of people.
Rehman told TRT World that by the time the rains recede, "we could well have one-fourth or one-third of Pakistan under water.”
“This is something that is a global crisis and of course, we will need better planning and sustainable development on the ground. ... We’ll need to have climate resilient crops as well as structures,” she said.
Pakistan is facing one of the world’s worst climate crises,& not all of it is of our own making. It’s coming to us from all sides,scorching temperatures,forest fires,water insecurity, glacial melt floods,simultaneous draughts,impacting public health & food insecurity. @trtworldpic.twitter.com/rk6XKaTNwK
— SenatorSherryRehman (@sherryrehman) May 21, 2022
In May, Rehman told BBC Newshour that both the country’s north and south were witnessing extreme weather events because of rising temperatures. “So in north, actually, just now we are ... experiencing what is known as glacial lake outburst floods which we have many of because Pakistan is home to the highest number of glaciers outside the polar region."
The government has deployed soldiers to help civilian authorities in rescue and relief operations across the country. The Pakistani army also said in a statement it airlifted 22 tourists trapped in a valley in the country's north to safety.
Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif visited flooding victims in city of Jafferabad in Balochistan.
He vowed the government would provide housing to all those who lost their homes.
Source: AP
Scores of people were killed and dozens went missing in the past 24 hours as monsoon downpours and roaring floodwaters continued to pound the country.
Millions of people in flood-ravaged areas are without electricity and gas.
(AFP)
Pakistan has neared the grim milestone of 1,000 deaths in rain-related incidents since mid-June, with swirling floods triggered by torrential downpour sweeping the country.
Another 45 people were killed and dozens went missing in the past 24 hours as monsoon downpours and roaring floodwaters continued to pound the country, according to officials and local media on Saturday.
With half of the South Asian nuclear country under water, the government announced a full-fledged deployment of the army in all four provinces, and the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region to back the civil administration, which is struggling to cope with the unprecedented magnitude of the catastrophe, state-run Pakistan Television reported.
The latest flooding caused by incessant rains displaced thousands in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh provinces, adding to the already increasing number of victims.
Most of the fatalities were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, followed by Sindh and Balochistan, pushing the overall toll to 982 since June 14, according to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority.
However, at a press conference in Islamabad, Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said that the number was over 1,000.
The ongoing monsoon spells, combined with massive flash floods, have left 30 million Pakistanis without shelter. Millions of people in flood-ravaged areas are without electricity and gas.
Raging waters from the Kabul River inundated Noshehra, Charsaddah and Madan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the government has converted schools and government buildings into shelter camps for thousands of displaced people, local broadcaster Geo News reported.
Massive floods swept away hundreds of houses, restaurants, bridges, and even several multi-storey hotels perched on the banks of the Swat River in the scenic Swat Valley, a favourite tourist attraction.
The southwestern Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan remained closed due to heavy rains and flooding.
READ MORE:Dozens more die as Pakistan blames 'horrors' of climate crisis for floods
Journalist Syed Ali Shah has the latest on floods in Pakistan from southwestern city of Quetta pic.twitter.com/5MbZPVdDPX
Türkiye to send humanitarian aidThe week-long rains that already destroyed much of the infrastructure and agriculture in the otherwise arid province have come to an end in the eastern districts.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Saturday released a statement, saying that they are "deeply saddened by the loss of many of our Pakistani brothers" as a result of the heavy damage caused by floods.
Türkiye will send a plane carrying humanitarian aid to Pakistan "in order to heal the wounds of our Pakistani brothers who were affected by the flood," according to the statement.
Also, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu spoke with his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari over the phone, offering his condolences for those who lost their lives in the floods and pledging Türkiye’s support.
READ MORE:Pakistan declares national emergency as floods leave at least 1,000 dead
Source: AA
GENEVA: The World Health Organization’s Covid chief said Friday it was time for a reality check on the virus after the millionth death from the disease this year.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead Covid-19, said the toll was “heartbreaking” because the tests, treatments, vaccines and public health measures to control the disease were all available.
“Given we’re in the third year of the pandemic, it’s… all the more so tragic given that we have the tools that can actually prevent these deaths,” she told a live interaction on the WHO’s social media channels.
“A lot of us have become numb to the numbers.
“We need a reality check. We really need to take stock of where we are. We should not be in a position with 14,000 or 15,000 people dying every week. We just shouldn’t.”
Van Kerkhove insisted that the pandemic was not over, but it could be brought to an end while people continue to live their daily lives.
“We just need to put a little extra thought into that, of being a bit more careful,” she said.
“A lot of people are talking about living with Covid. But we need to live with this responsibly.
“A million deaths this year is not living with Covid. Having 15,000 deaths per week is not living with Covid-19 responsibly.”
Nearly 6.45 million deaths have been reported to the WHO since the virus was first detected in China in late 2019.
More than 5.3 million new cases were reported to the UN health agency last week.
“These are huge numbers, and that’s an underestimate,” said Van Kerkhove, with home testing not being reflected in surveillance data.
“We do see this virus circulating really intensely around the world.
“The virus is not going away, unfortunately.”
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US faced widespread criticism over an air strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including children, during the final chaotic days of its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
New Pentagon plan aims to more consistently involve Civilian Protection teams to specifically challenge assumptions to make sure a strike is appropriate.
(AFP)
The Pentagon will set up a new centre in the next year to help avoid civilian casualties in military operations around the world through better education and training and increased screening before strikes are launched.
The plan ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and released on Thursday comes on the heels of widespread criticism over a US air strike in Kabul last August that killed 10 civilians, including children, during the final chaotic days of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A senior defence official said the development of a new Civilian Protection Center of Excellence and other improvements will cost "tens of millions of dollars" per year, and the plan more broadly would involve the addition of about 150 staff.
The centre would initially start operations in the 2023 budget year that begins October 1 and would be fully staffed and working by 2025.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity under department rules to provide details of the plan.
Laid out in a 36-page action plan, the changes approved by Austin call for updated policies and guidelines for military operations, and steps that must be taken in order to better analyse threats, assess who is on the ground and determine what other civilian structures could be affected.
Too far from the strike zone
A key criticism of the Afghanistan drone strike was that those making the final decision were too quick to conclude that the white Toyota Corolla under watch aligned with the intelligence and confirmed their conclusion to bomb what turned out to be the wrong vehicle.
The new Pentagon plan is aimed at preventing such "confirmation bias" and more consistently involving teams to specifically challenge assumptions to make sure a strike is appropriate.
The plan would put new personnel in each of the combatant commands that are in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific, South America and US Northern Command in Colorado, as well as in all the military services, other senior commands and vital places such as Special Operations Command, Cyber Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
There has been persistent criticism, particularly from human rights organisations, that US military strikes in Syria, Iraq and other battlefields have killed civilians but that officials have failed or been slow to acknowledge those deaths.
In some cases, the US military's inability to get to a strike location in its immediate aftermath has led to conclusions that allegations of civilian deaths were not confirmable.
US unprepared for largescale urban war
An independent review done late last year found that better communication between those making the strike decision and other support personnel might have raised more doubts about the Kabul attack or possibly prevented it.
Under Austin's plan, civilian casualty assessments will become a consistent element in military exercises so troops can practice how best to avoid killing the innocent. It will set up a new framework for how the Defense Department responds to deaths, including acknowledging them and providing condolences and other aid in the aftermath.
More broadly, the plan accounts for better assessment in counterterrorism strikes as well as the prospects of civilian casualties in a large-scale war, such as one with China or Russia.
A review by RAND Corp of the August 2021 air strike in Afghanistan concluded that military's focus on civilian casualties has for years largely involved operations in places such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. RAND said the Pentagon is not prepared to deal with the issue in that larger type of war, which likely would involve combat in urban areas where it would be more difficult to distinguish between civilian and military targets.
The August 29 drone strike in Afghanistan killed Zemerai Ahmadi and nine family members, including seven children. Ahmadi, 37, was a longtime employee of an American humanitarian organisation and was not a militant, as first claimed by military officials.
The independent Pentagon review concluded there was no misconduct or negligence.
RAND's review concluded that the US military follows a flawed and inadequate process for assessing and investigating suspected civilian damage and casualties caused by US air strikes. It recommended the military take a broader view of damage to include structural damage that hurts basic community functions.
Source: AP
More than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion, according to a tally of confirmed deaths updated this week by independent Russian media outlet iStories.
The figure is over three times higher than the official death toll of 1,351 which was last updated by the Russian Defense Ministry in March.
While Russia is believed to have suffered significant military losses since its February invasion of Ukraine, the exact number of killed soldiers has been subject to intense speculation with Western officials estimating the number to be over 15,000 and Ukrainian officials claiming it to be more than 42,000.
iStories has verified the deaths of 5,107 soldiers.
The tally by iStories is likely to be far below the real number — because it is only based on publicly available social media posts and media reports — but it is one of the few independently managed databases of Russian losses, including names, ages and, often, the towns and villages where the dead men were from.
The Moscow Times created six graphs based on the iStories data to show what we know about the more than 5,000 soldiers killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
"A lot of people" remain unaccounted for amid devastating flooding in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday.
"We're going to do our best to find them all," Beshear said, without providing a number of the missing.
Beshear toured the devastation by helicopter on Friday and called it the worst flooding he's seen since being in office.
Flooding is shown in downtown Jackson, Ky., on July 29, 2022.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
A group of stranded people are rescued from the flood waters of the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Jackson, Ky., on July 28, 2022.
Leandro Lozada/AFP via Getty Images
The official death toll stands at 16, including two children.
Beshear said Friday afternoon that he's learned of the recovery of four children's bodies, adding, "We do not have an official update at this time as they have to be verified" by the Department for Public Health.
The governor anticipated that authorities may be updating the number of deceased for "several weeks."
A Knott County 911 emergency vehicle was washed into the Right Fork Troublesome Creek in Hindman, Ky., July 29, 2022.
Matt Stone/Courier Journal via USA Today Network
Water surrounds homes and structures after flash flooding near Quicksand, Ky., July 28, 2022.
Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP
Homes are flooded by Lost Creek, Ky., July 28, 2022, after heavy rains caused flash flooding and mudslides in parts of central Appalachia.
Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP
On Thursday, Beshear called it "one of the worst, most devastating" floods in the state's history and said he anticipates this will be one of the deadliest floods in Kentucky in "a very long time."
The flooding hit Kentucky late Wednesday, pounding the state with 2 to 5 inches of rain.
Bonnie Combs hugs her 10-year-old granddaughter Adelynn Bowling, as she watches her property become covered by the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Jackson, Ky., July 28, 2022.
Timothy D. Easley/AP
April Stivers, 38, of Lost Creek, Kentucky, takes a moment to herself in the Hazard Community & Technical College, where survivors of the major flooding in Eastern Kentucky are being taken for shelter on July 28, 2022 in Breathitt County, Ky. April was airlifted from her roof after her partner Chad hammered a hole in the roof to climb out.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
A car is submerged in flood waters along Right Beaver Creek following a day of heavy rain, on July 28, 2022, in Garrett, Ky.
By Pat McDonogh/USA Today Network
Kentucky is combating washed out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools, according to the governor.
Thousands of residents are expected to lose their homes, he said.
Members of a rescue team assist a family out of a boat in Quicksand, Ky., on July 28, 2022. Storms have dropped as much as 12 inches of rain in some parts of Eastern Kentucky, causing devastating floods in some areas.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
A member of the Jackson Fire Dept. reacts outside his vehicle downtown on July 28, 2022 in Jackson, Ky. Storms that dropped as much as 12 inches of rain in some parts of Eastern Kentucky have caused devastating floods in some areas.
Michael Swensen/Getty Images
More than 294 people have been rescued from floodwaters in eastern Kentucky so far and that number will likely rise, Beshear said.
The rain may return to Kentucky late Sunday through early next week, but significant rainfall isn't expected.
"While rain totals are not expected to be as high, flooding still remains a concern due to saturated grounds," the governor tweeted.
A truck drives along flooded Wolverine Road in Breathitt County, Ky., July 28, 2022, after heavy rains caused flash flooding and mudslides in parts of central Appalachia. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear says it's some of the worst flooding in state history.
Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP
Homes along Gross Loop off of KY-15 are flooded with water from the North Fork of the Kentucky River in Jackson, Ky., July 28, 2022.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration and is receiving updates "very regularly," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.
"Our hearts break for the families of those who have lost their lives or are missing, and to all those who have been impacted," she said.
ABC News' Alexandra Faul, Kenton Gewecke, Josh Hoyos, Justin Ryan Gomez and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
Passenger bus loses control on busy Meru-Nairobi highway and falls into Nithi River, killing 24 people, officials say.
The Nithi River bridge has been a blackspot for many years and drivers have been warned to slow down when passing through the area.
(AP)
Twenty-four people have been confirmed dead after a bus plunged 40 metres off a bridge into the Nithi River in central Kenya.
The accident occurred along the busy Meru-Nairobi highway when the 57-seat bus at a high speed on a steep slope crashed into the guardrails of the bridge and lost control, tumbling into the river, police said on Sunday.
The bus, belonging to Modern Coast bus services, was heading for the coastal town of Mombasa from the Meru town when the accident occurred at around 6 pm local time.
Tharaka Nithi County Rescue team manager, Alex Mugambi, spoke to the media at the site of the accident and noted that "rescue efforts are under way and locals have been really helpful" during the search and rescue operations.
"I cannot ascertain the number of people who were inside the bus, but for now, the figures that I can give you is that 24 people have been confirmed dead in that accident, and the doctors and the medics are trying to save some lives of those critically injured."
Mugambi, who is leading the operation alongside emergency services and the police, also added that the injured had been rushed to the Chogoria and Chuka County referral hospitals.
Blackspot for drivers
The Nithi River bridge has been a blackspot for many years and drivers have been warned to slow down when passing through the area.
At least 20 passengers were killed on July 8 in a crash along the highway from Nairobi to the coastal city of Mombasa.
Last year, five people were killed after their minibus plunged into the river at the same location injuring many others, while last month, one passenger was killed at the same location.
In 2015, three people were killed at the same spot after a bus belonging to Sunbird Company plunged into the Nithi River bridge, and dozens were injured in the accident.
