At least 143 people died in April in Pakistan due to rain and storms, with the amount of rain that has fallen since the beginning of the month being two and a half times more than usual, local authorities said today.
Heavy rains, unusual for the season, caused flash floods and house collapses. Many people were also killed by lightning.
The amount of rain was “164 percent above normal April levels, which is very unusual,” Zahir Ahmad Babar, a spokesman for Pakistan’s meteorological service, told AFP.
“These unusual rainfall patterns are a direct consequence of climate change,” he added.
Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country with 240 million inhabitants, is among those most threatened by climate change.
It is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather and the monsoon, which normally arrives in early July, is often devastating.
The heaviest toll, with 83 deaths, including 38 children, was in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 3,500 homes were damaged.
“It was the collapse of roofs and landslides that caused casualties,” Anwar Shahzad, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority, told AFP today.
In Punjab, the country’s most populous and grain-producing province, hailstorms destroyed wheat crops, a staple food for the population.
Twenty-one people have died in Punjab, according to provincial authorities, including farmers who were struck by lightning while harvesting their wheat crop.
In Baluchistan, in the southwestern part of the country, at least 21 people died, while schools were temporarily closed.
Also, 14 people died in Pakistan’s Kashmir (north) and at least four were killed in road accidents caused by flooded roads in Sindh province (south).
During the summer of 2022, unprecedented flooding submerged a third of the country, affecting over 33 million people and killing over 1,700 people.
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