Floods in Pakistan | Thousands of residents forced to evacuate their homes

(Mingora) Thousands of people living near flooded rivers in northern Pakistan were ordered to evacuate their homes on Saturday after devastating monsoon rains had already claimed nearly 1,000 lives.

Many rivers in Khyber Pahktunkhwa province — criss-crossed by mountains and steep valleys — overflowed and destroyed dozens of buildings, including a 150-room hotel washed away by raging waters.

“The house we had built after years of hard work has disappeared before our eyes,” lamented Junaid Khan, 23, owner of two fish farms in Charsadda.

“We sat on the side of the road and watched our dream house sink,” he told AFP.

Peak expected on Sunday

The monsoon, which usually lasts from June to September, is essential for the irrigation of plantations and to replenish the water resources of the Indian subcontinent. But it also brings its share of drama and destruction each year.

More than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — have been affected by the floods and nearly a million homes have been destroyed or severely damaged, according to the government.

On Saturday, authorities ordered thousands of residents of Swat district to evacuate their homes before the rivers burst their banks.

“At first, some people refused to leave, but when the water level rose, they accepted,” Bilal Faizi, spokesman for the emergency services, told AFP.

According to the authorities, these bad weather are comparable to those of 2010, year during which 2000 people had been killed and nearly a fifth of the country submerged by the rains.

Shah Faisal, a roadside farmer from Charsadda with his wife and two daughters, also saw his house swallowed up by a river as the powerful current eroded the bank.

Here, the Jindi, Swat and Kabul rivers flow through narrow gorges in the city before joining the Indus, which also overflows downstream.

“We escaped death,” the farmer told AFP.

Pakistani officials attribute the devastating weather to climate change, saying Pakistan is unfairly suffering the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world.

Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to climate change. It appears in 8^e position of the countries most at risk from extreme weather events, according to a study by the NGO Germanwatch.

However, the inhabitants also have their share of responsibility for the damage caused.

Corruption and poorly planned urban planning have led to the construction of thousands of buildings in flood-prone areas.

The government declared a state of emergency on Friday and mobilized the army to deal with this “catastrophe of a rare magnitude”, as Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman called it.

According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), since the onset of the monsoon in June, floods have ravaged more than 80,000 hectares of crops, destroyed 3,100 kilometers of roads and washed away 149 bridges.

In Sukkur, more than 1,000 kilometers south of Swat, agricultural land irrigated by the Indus River was under water and tens of thousands of people took refuge on elevated roads and highways.

“We have opened the floodgates wide” at the major Sukkur dam on the Indus, his supervisor, Aziz Soomro, told AFP, adding that the peak of the flood was expected for Sunday.

These floods come at the worst time for Pakistan, whose economy is collapsing and which has been in deep political crisis since the ousting of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April following a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly .