At least 32 people killed as flash floods hit northern Pakistan
At least 32 people have been killed in Pakistan in recent flash flooding caused by heavy rains, including a family of tourists who died after being swept away by flood waters while apparently awaiting rescue.
Videos of the family stranded on a small piece of land as the raging Swat River in northern Pakistan swept them away were shared widely on social media, prompting anger towards the provincial government as witnesses said the family waited helplessly for more than an hour.
Flash floods and heavy rains have killed 32 people, including 16 children, in Pakistan in the past 36 hours; 13 were from Punjab province and 19 from the north-west Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the tourist family died.
Sheikh Waqas Akram, the central information secretary of the former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which is in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said they had suspended four senior officials from the Swat administration and emergency rescue department.
Akram said the chief minister, Ali Amin Gandapur, had ordered an inquiry and asked that the report be submitted in a week, in documents seen by the Guardian.
'The province [held] a meeting on flash floods on 21 June,' Akram told the Guardian. 'Soon after the meeting we issued warnings and announced it through speakers in mosques as well. It was done to spread awareness and ask tourists to be away from the riverbank and never step on the riverbed. At least 71 people were booked in cases in violation of the warnings.'
He added: 'It was a tragic and unfortunate incident and the tourists were in the riverbed.'
When the flash flood occurred, the family from Punjab province were having a picnic breakfast by the river in the Swat district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The family had gone into the river to rescue the children, who had been taking photos, government officials said.
According to Akram, at least 17 people were swept away in the flash floods in the Swat River – bodies of nine family members had been recovered and one was missing. Four other people were rescued while three were still missing. He said the rescue efforts were continuing.
The Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) later issued an alert saying there were high flood levels and warning people to take precautions.
Pakistan, with a population of more than 240 million, is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to the effects of the climate crisis. Climate induced flash floods in 2022, killed at least 1,700 people and affected more than 33 million people. The incident prompted discussion in Pakistan on the climate crisis, provincial governments' role in preventing such incidents, tourists avoiding warnings and allegations of incompetence and corruption in local government.
The former climate change minister Sherry Rehman said the tourists in Pakistan no longer respond to colonial-era instructions such as section 144 – which allows district administrations to place bans on activities – and they seem not to heed extreme weather warnings.
Rehman criticised poor government signalling on the climate crisis and a lack of coordinated efforts, saying: 'Public resources also fell egregiously short in this tragedy. The PDMA should have mobilised a helicopter to get to the marooned family in time. It's outrageous negligence on their part not to have.'
Many social media users criticised the government for failing to rescue the stranded family as witness accounts said they were stuck for more than an hour without any help.
The PDMAs were created after the deadly 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and are responsible for responding in a timely way to natural calamities, floods and disasters. The disaster authorities in different Pakistani provinces have been accused of corruption.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
India appeals to Donald Trump for a ‘big, beautiful trade pact'
Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said India would love to have a 'big, beautiful' trade deal with the US, as Washington and New Delhi race to clinch an agreement before the 9 July deadline when punitive tariffs are set to kick in. However, the minister also laid out India's red lines as she expressed hopes for an interim Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) between the two 'strong economies.' Her remarks came after US president Donald Trump last week said a 'very big' deal with India was 'coming up' soon, even though negotiators on both sides appeared to have hit a deadlock over key issues. The US is India's largest trading partner, with the value of their bilateral trade reaching $190bn recently. But after taking office for his second term in January, Mr Trump branded India a "tariff king" and a "big abuser" of trade ties. He has threatened to impose an additional tariff of up to 26 per cent on Indian goods. Although steep, the levy is still lower than the total 104 per cent imposed on China, 49 per cent on Cambodia, and 46 per cent on Vietnam. The additional duties are due to kick back in after a 90-day pause, targeting products like machinery, pearls, mineral fuels, and more. 'I'd love to have an agreement, a big, good, beautiful one; why not?" Ms Sitharam said in an interview with The Financial Express. "The US is one of our leading trade partners, topmost if anything. At the junction we are in, and given our growth goals and ambition to reach Viksit Bharat [developed India] by 2047, the sooner we have such agreements with strong economies, the better they will serve us. So, I'd rather put my own statement on (Trump's)," she added. She nonetheless noted that protecting India's agriculture and dairy industries have been among the 'major red lines' in the BTA talks with the US. "The negotiating team ensured that the industry's concerns were all taken on board before they sat at the table. Agriculture and dairy have been among the very big red lines, where a high degree of caution has been exercised," she said in the interview. The finance minister pushed back against Mr Trump's accusations that India was a 'tariff king', saying the label is 'unjustified' and that India's tariffs against the US were modest and within the World Trade Organisation 's guidelines. "We have only eight duties, inclusive of zero tariffs. There have been drastic cuts in both the July and February budgets. The effective tariff rates are far below the WTO thresholds. So, for India to be called a 'tariff king' is absolutely unjustified," she said. A major sticking point in the India–US trade deal is agriculture, where deep structural differences persist. The US wants greater access for its big-ticket farm exports like wheat, corn, cotton, and genetically modified (GM) crops to narrow its trade deficit, but India has resisted, citing the need to protect food security and the livelihoods of millions of small farmers. Unlike the US, where large-scale, heavily subsidised farming is the norm, India's agriculture is dominated by small landholdings and low productivity. High tariffs – up to 150 per cent – are used by India to shield its farmers from cheaper imports. The US argues these barriers are unfair, while India sees them as essential for survival. After Mr Trump unveiled his Liberation Day tariffs, India acted swiftly by reducing tariffs on select US goods, including motorcycles and whiskey, and offered concessions in the agricultural and defence sectors in an effort to ease tensions with Washington. The two countries have engaged in a series of high-level negotiations aimed at finalising a trade deal before the full impact of Trump's new tariffs takes effect. But progress has been slowed by political sensitivities in India, particularly around the farming and auto industries, which remain key domestic concerns. According to Bloomberg, Indian negotiators in Washington have extended their stay to resolve these differences and reach a deal before the deadline. People familiar with the matter said the negotiations that were supposed to run until 27 June were extended by a day, raising hopes of a timely trade deal.
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Philippines says military leaders working to set-up 'one-theatre' approach in East, South China seas
MANILA, June 30 (Reuters) - Military leaders are working to enforce a "one-theatre" concept in both the East and South China seas, the Philippines' defence minister said on Monday, adding that the Southeast Asian country faces threats in disputed waters that are similar to Japan's. Japanese newspaper Asahi reported in April that Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani made a proposal to U.S. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth to consider the East China Sea, the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula and surrounding areas as a single "theatre", referring to a military area of operation. Gilberto Teodoro, the Philippines' Secretary of National Defense, said it was "reasonable" to treat both the East and South China seas as a single area of operation, saying both are maritime areas with no land borders involved. However, he said the area should exclude the Korean Peninsula. "That will involve synergy in operations, synergy in domain awareness, in intelligence exchange, and in mutually reinforcing our strengths to work doubly real-time," he said at a briefing during the visit of his Lithuanian counterpart Dovile Sakaliene. Japan and China have repeatedly faced off over uninhabited Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea that Tokyo calls the Senkaku and Beijing calls the Diaoyu. The Philippines and China, meanwhile, have clashed frequently in the South China Sea around disputed shoals and atolls that fall inside Manila's exclusive economic zone. China's embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Japan's Joint Operations Command is operationalising the single-theatre concept, and the "Squad" grouping that includes the defense ministers of Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United States will establish a coordinating centre in December to enforce it, Teodoro said. "So it is already an operating concept. It does not need any other agreement," Teodoro said. Japan and the Philippines last year signed a military agreement that could allow their soldiers on each other's soil. Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines has extended its arc of alliances beyond the United States, its traditional ally, signing defence deals with Japan and New Zealand, and negotiating for similar agreements with Canada and France. On Monday, the Philippines and Lithuania signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen defence cooperation in areas like cyber security, maritime security and munitions production. "The interesting thing is that we're facing absolutely similar threats and our hostile neighbours are using absolutely similar approach," Lithuanian defence minister Dovile Sakaliene said in the joint briefing with Teodoro.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Indian official blames ‘political constraints' for loss of jets during clash with Pakistan
Indian 'political constraints' are to be blamed for the loss of fighter jets during the air force's operation in Pakistan, an Indian military attache to Indonesia has said, in remarks that have triggered a political row in the country. In a seminar at an Indonesian university analysing the India -Pakistan conflict, Captain Shiv Kumar said the Indian government did not permit strikes on Pakistani military bases at the start of the hostilities between the two countries, claiming this allowed Islamabad to shoot down an unspecified number of fighter jets. 'I may not agree with him that India lost so many aircraft. But I do agree that we did lose some aircraft and that happened only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishments and their air defences,' Captain Kumar of the Indian Navy said at the Universitas Dirgantara Marsekal Suryadarma on 10 June. New Delhi and Islamabad stepped back from the brink of all-out war on 7 May following their worst military escalation in decades, during which both sides fired drone and missile strikes in a four-day showdown while border forces fired artillery at the border, killing dozens of people. The conflict followed a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on 22 April that led to the deaths of 26 civilians, the worst attack on civilians in decades in the region. India called it an act of terrorism and blamed Pakistan-based militants for the attack, while Pakistan denied any involvement. Captain Kumar's comments follow weeks in which the Indian government formally refused to admit any of its jets had been shot down. India's chief of defence staff Anil Chauhan eventually admitted India suffered some losses but declined to give figures or details on how the planes came down. He blamed the loss of jets on tactical mistakes, which he claimed were then rectified during subsequent days. 'What is important is that... not the jet being downed, but why they were being downed,' he told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May. Captain Kumar's latest comments represent the clearest explanation yet from the Indian side about why it lost fighter jets during the conflict, amid scrutiny of prime minister Narendra Modi's government from opposition parties at home. The opposition Congress party doubled down on its criticism of the government, using the Indonesian official's comment to argue that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had "misled" the country. 'There are several unanswered questions related to the untimely ceasefire – especially when India actually had an upper hand in the escalation,' it said. It prompted the Indian embassy in Indonesia to issue a clarification on Captain Kumar's remarks, saying his statements were misrepresented. 'His remarks have been quoted out of context and the media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker,' it said on X. 'The presentation conveyed that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership unlike some other countries in our neighbourhood.' During the speech at the university, Captain Kumar said India reassessed its policy after suffering initial losses and went about targeting Pakistan's air defences, allowing New Delhi to hit several military targets. He said it was the Indian strikes on airbases that led to Pakistan calling for a ceasefire. The intense fighting came to a halt after the two governments announced a ceasefire following talks between their national security advisers. US president Donald Trump claimed credit for brokering the truce but Indian officials quietly rowed back against the idea that his intervention was pivotal.
