Pakistan races to rescue 1.6 million at risk as floods rages on

Pakistani authorities are locked in a tight race against time to rescue at least 1.6 million people at risk of massive flooding, as swollen rivers continue to overflow into villages, officials and the UN said on Wednesday.

The swollen rivers, flash floods, urban inundation and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains, cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts have killed 928 people since late June, the disaster agency said.

Nearly 6 million people have been affected by the floods in the northern Himalayan region, north-western mountainous terrain and the central plains so far, the UN disaster agency said.

Another 1.6 million people were at risk of massive flooding and might need relocation or rescue, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, as the swollen rivers entered the southern province of Sindh.

"We have already evacuated around 200,000 people from the riverbeds and ready to rescue more," Sindh's Chief Minister Murad Shah said.

Rescue workers and soldiers backed by boats and helicopters have already evacuated more than 2 million people in the central province of Punjab, nearly 300,000 in the past two days, the regional disaster agency said.

Schools were closed and streets were deserted in the port city of Karachi on Wednesday after heavy rains overnight that flooded almost the entire metropolis.

The monsoon, a season of heavy rains in South Asian regions that runs from July to September, has been unpredictable and harsher in recent years under the impact of climate change, killing thousands every year and affecting millions.

More than 2,000 people were killed in super floods that hit Pakistan in 2022 and subsequent diseases.