(Islamabad) Plus de 800 personnes sont mortes depuis juin au Pakistan à cause des fortes pluies de mousson, une « catastrophe d’une rare ampleur » selon la ministre du Changement climatique qui va faire appel à l’aide internationale.
Publié à 7h17
La mousson, qui dure habituellement de juin à septembre, est essentielle pour l’irrigation des plantations et pour reconstituer les ressources en eau du sous-continent indien. Mais elle apporte aussi chaque année son lot de drames et destructions.
De fortes pluies ont encore frappé une grande partie du pays ces dernières 24 heures, faisant au moins une douzaine de morts, dont neuf enfants, selon les autorités.
« Cela fait un mois qu’il pleut. Nous n’avons plus rien », a déclaré à l’AFP Khanzadi, une habitante de Jaffarabad, dans la province du Baloutchistan, l’une des plus touchées.
« Nous n’avions qu’une seule chèvre, elle aussi s’est noyée dans les inondations. Maintenant, nous n’avons plus rien avec nous […] and we are hungry,” she added.
The government will appeal for international assistance once the damage assessment is complete, said Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman.
“Given the scale of the disaster, there is no question that the provinces, or even Islamabad, will face the scale of this climate catastrophe alone,” she told AFP.
“Lives are at risk, thousands homeless […] It is important that international partners mobilize their help,” she added.
Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to climate change. It appears in 8e position of the countries most at risk from extreme weather events, according to a study by the NGO Germanwatch.
Earlier this year, much of the country was in the grip of a heat wave, with up to 51 degrees Celsius recorded in Jacobabad, Sindh province.
This city is now affected by floods which have damaged houses, washed away roads and bridges and destroyed crops.
In Sukkur, about 75 kilometers from Jacobabad, volunteers were using boats along flooded city streets to distribute food and fresh water to people trapped in their homes.
The rains this year are the worst since those of 2010 which left more than 2,000 dead and more than two million displaced, Zaheer Ahmad Babar, chief forecaster of the Pakistan Meteorological Service (PMD), told AFP.
In Baluchistan province, rainfall was 430 percent above normal and nearly 500 percent in Sindh, he said.
The city of Padidan, in Sindh, has received more than a meter of rain since 1er august.
“It’s a climatic disaster of a rare magnitude,” said Mme Rehman, stating that three million people had been affected.
Nearly 125,000 homes were destroyed and another 288,000 damaged, the National Disaster Management Authority said in a statement.
In Sindh and Balochistan, some 700,000 head of cattle have been killed and more than 80,000 hectares of farmland destroyed, officials say.
Nearly 3000 km of roads were also damaged.