Islamabad, Sept. 5 (BNA) Pakistani authorities are battling to prevent the country’s largest lake from flooding its banks and inundating neighboring towns after unprecedented flooding, while the disaster management agency on Monday raised the death toll from floods by 24 more.
Record monsoon rains and melting glaciers in the northern mountains of Pakistan have caused floods affecting 33 million people and killing at least 1,314 people, including 458 children, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Agency said.
The floods followed record summer temperatures, and both the government and the United Nations blamed climate change for the extreme weather and the devastation it wrought.
On Sunday, authorities breached Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake, displacing up to 100,000 people from their homes in hopes of draining enough water to prevent the lake from flooding its banks and inundating more densely populated areas.
But water levels in the lake, located to the west of the Indus in the southern province of Indus, are still dangerously high.
Jam Khan Shoro, the regional irrigation minister, told Reuters that the water level in Lake Manchar had not decreased.
He declined to say whether another attempt would be made to drain the water from the lake.
The floods are a huge burden on an economy that already needs help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The United Nations called for $160 million to help flood victims, but Finance Minister Muftah Ismail said the cost of the damage was much higher.
“The total losses are close to $10 billion and maybe more,” Ismail said in an interview with CNBC.
“Obviously this is not enough. Despite the scarce resources, Pakistan will have to do a lot of heavy lifting.”
However, help from outside is arriving.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that relief flights from the United Nations and countries including Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates arrived on Monday.
Elsewhere in the region, floods are also threatening crisis-hit Sri Lanka, while rains have disrupted life in Bangalore, India’s technology hub.
Northern summer is the rainy season in most parts of Asia.