Following a visit to some of the districts affected by the floods, which have affected up to a third of Pakistan, where 18 more fatalities brought the total number of deaths from days of rain to 1,343, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stated on Wednesday that parts of the country were ‘like a sea.’
A crisis attributed to climate change that has made hundreds of thousands homeless and resulted in losses of at least $10 billion, according to officials, has affected up to 33 million of a population of 220 million.
After visiting the southern state of Sindh, Sharif told the reporters, ‘You wouldn’t believe the magnitude of destruction there.’ ‘As far as the eye could see, water was present everywhere. It resembles a sea exactly.’
The government will purchase 200,000 tents to shelter displaced people after increasing financial handouts for flood victims to 70 billion Pakistani rupees ($313.90 million).
Water-borne infectious diseases pose a new hazard that is posed by receding waters, according to Sharif.
A big portion of those impacted are from Sindh, where Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake is perilously near to bursting its banks even after being breached in an operation that forced 100,000 people to flee their homes.
According to national disaster officials, eight children were among the fatalities on the previous day. Record-breaking monsoon rains and glacier melt in Pakistan’s northern mountains were the causes of the floods.
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