Thousands have no shelter and food due to this “humanitarian disaster,” Sherry Rehman said. “As we speak, thousands are homeless without shelter, without food. And the communication lines have been cut off. It is a serious humanitarian disaster.”
She also tweeted that among the dead are 326 children. The government is utilizing 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 livestock have been killed, nearly all of them in Balochistan, while nearly 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of roads and 129 bridges have been damaged, blocking access to flood-affected areas, OCHA writes.
Pakistan has monsoon rains every year, but nothing has been as bad as the rains this summer, Rehman also said. Residents were caught unprepared, for instance, when 400 millimeters (about 15 inches) of rain poured down over the course of hours in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, she said.
“No city is structured or geared up or that climate resilient that it can cope with this amount of water in such a short time,” she 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 earlier in August. Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, received 305% more rain than the annual average, the disaster agency said.