Thousands are without shelter and food due to this “humanitarian disaster,” said Sherry Rehman. “As we speak, thousands are homeless, without shelter, without food. And the lines of communication have been cut. It is a serious humanitarian disaster.”
He also tweeted that among the dead are 326 children. The government is using all available resources to help the victims, she said.
Heavy monsoon rains and floods have affected 2.3 million people in Pakistan since mid-June, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
More than 504,000 head of cattle have died, almost all of them in Baluchistan, while nearly 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of roads and 129 bridges have been damaged, blocking access to flood-affected areas, OCHA writes.
On Wednesday, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said more international funds were needed for flood relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of damaged infrastructure.
Rehman, speaking at an NDMA briefing on Wednesday, compared the situation to the record floods of 2010, but said much of Balochistan, southern Punjab and 30 districts in the Sindh region were facing a “disaster”. unprecedented humanitarian.
“People are adrift, livestock and crops are damaged,” Rehman said.
More heavy rain and flooding are expected, and schools in Baluchistan and Sindh have been closed in anticipation of a new spell of monsoon rains expected later in the week.
China said on Wednesday that it would provide emergency humanitarian aid to Pakistan, according to a tweet from the Chinese embassy in Pakistan. The supplies would include 25,000 tents along with $300,000 in emergency cash to help Pakistan’s flood-affected regions, according to the statement.
Pakistan gets monsoon rains every year, but nothing has been as bad as this summer’s rains, Rehman told CNN. Residents were unprepared, for example, when 400 millimeters (about 15 inches) of rain fell over the course of hours in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, he said.
“No city is structured or prepared or climate-resilient enough to be able to deal with this amount of water in such a short time,” he said. “This is a torrential downpour of biblical proportions.”
July was the wettest in three decades, with 133% more rain than the average for the past 30 years, the National Disaster Management Authority said in early August. Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, received 305% more rain than the annual average, the disaster agency said.
