Pakistani authorities are struggling to prevent the largest lake in the country to explode of its banks and flood the closest cities after floods that have never occurred before, while the disaster management agency on Monday increased the number of flood deaths by 24 others.
Notes of Monsun Rain and melted glaciers in the northern mountains of Pakistan have brought floods that have affected 33 million people and killed at least 1,314, including 458 children, said the National Disaster Management Agency of Pakistan.
Floods have followed the summer temperature that broke the record and the government and the United Nations have blamed climate change for extreme weather and the destruction of it.
Authorities on Sunday violated Pakistani’s largest freshwater lake, displaced up to 100,000 people from their home in the hope of draining enough water to stop the lake that exploded and flooded solid population areas.
But the water level in the lake, west of the Indus river in the southern province of Sindh, remains high.
“The water level in Lake Mancchar has not yet come down,” Jam Khan Shoro, the provincial minister for irrigation, told Reuters.
He refused to say if other efforts to drain water from the lake would be carried out.
Flooding is a big burden for the economy that already needs assistance from international monetary funds.
The United Nations has called for $ 160 million aid to help flood victims but Minister of Finance Miftah Ismail said the cost of damage was much higher than that.
“The total damage is close to $ 10 billion, maybe more,” Ismail said in an interview with CNBC.
“Obviously that is not enough. Apart from the slight resources Pakistani must do many heavy things.”
However, assistance from abroad will arrive. Flights assistance from the United Nations and countries including Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates arrived on Monday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
In other places in this region, floods also threatened the crisis hit by the Sri Lanka crisis, while the rain had disrupted life at the Indian technology center, Bangalore. North summer is the rainy season in most Asia.