Heavy flooding leaves 900 dead in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Months of heavy rains have killed more than 900 people and affected more than 30 million, according to the Pakistani government.

The country is facing “unprecedented damage and devastation,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement Friday.

Sharif’s government declared a national emergency Thursday night, deploying the country’s military to inundated areas and establishing an emergency response team in Islamabad.

Roads and bridges were swept away by the flooding and families walked through knee-high water to flee their villages and reach dry land.

Pakistan’s northern areas have been among the hardest hit. In the remote mountainous city of Swat, thousands are believed to be trapped. The Pakistani military has begun evacuating people from the area by helicopter.

“Our priority is to rescue the people and provide them with relief,” including temporary housing, food and other basic supplies, said Taimoor Khan, an official from the disaster management authority in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district where Swat is located.

Before traveling to flood-affected areas Friday, Sharif called on “friendly countries, donors and the international financial institutions for their continued cooperation at this difficult time.”

The disaster is expected to increase pressure on the government as it battles an economic crisis and a political power struggle with the country’s former leader, Imran Khan.

The former prime minister, who was recently charged under the country’s anti-terrorism law for threatening current government officials, also visited flooded areas.

In a tweet, Khan said he traveled there to discuss how to improve the “speed of the assistance,” including measures to prevent the spread of disease.

The flooding is the worst to hit Pakistan in more than a decade. In 2010, floodwaters killed hundreds of people and left millions of others homeless. Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman said the current floods could be even more destructive.

“Pakistan was already facing the disastrous consequences of climate change, and now the most devastating monsoon rains in a decade are causing incessant destruction across the country,” Rehman told a news conference Thursday.