Tens of millions battle Pakistan floods as death toll rises

Residents gather beside a road damaged by flood waters following heavy monsoon rains in Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on August 29, 2022.(AFP)
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Updated 25 September 2022
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Tens of millions battle Pakistan floods as death toll rises

  • Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water, hampering a massive military-led relief operation
  • This year’s flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis

SUKKAR: Tens of millions of people across swathes of Pakistan were Monday battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed, and the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.
Officials say 1,061 people have died since June when the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges.
The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but it can also bring destruction.
This year’s flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — said the National Disaster Management Authority.
“What we see now is an ocean of water submerging entire districts,” Climate Minister Sherry Rehman told AFP Monday.
“This is very far from a normal monsoon — it is climate dystopia at our doorstep.”
This year’s floods are comparable to those of 2010 — the worst on record — when more than 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on a tour of the north to oversee relief operations, said the monsoon rains were “unprecedented in the last 30 years.”
Near Sukkur, a city in southern Sindh province and home to an aging colonial-era barrage on the Indus River that is vital to preventing further catastrophe, one farmer lamented the devastation wrought on his rice fields.
Millions of acres of rich farmland have been flooded by weeks of non-stop rain, but now the Indus is threatening to burst its banks as torrents of water course downstream from tributaries in the north.
“Our crop spanned over 5,000 acres on which the best quality rice was sown and is eaten by you and us,” Khalil Ahmed, 70, told AFP.
“All that is finished.”
Much of Sindh is now an endless landscape of water, hampering a massive military-led relief operation.
“There are no landing strips or approaches available... our pilots find it difficult to land,” one senior officer told AFP.
The army’s helicopters were also struggling to pluck people to safety in the north, where soaring mountains and deep valleys make for treacherous flying conditions.
Many rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — which boasts some of Pakistan’s best tourist spots — have burst their banks, demolishing scores of buildings including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent.
The government has declared an emergency and appealed for international help, and on Sunday the first aid flights began arriving — from Turkey and the UAE.
It could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan, where the economy is in free fall.
In Washington later Monday, the International Monetary Fund executive board was scheduled to meet to decide whether to green-light the resumption of a $6 billion loan program essential for the country to service its foreign debt, but it is already clear the country will need more to repair and rebuild after this monsoon.
Prices of basic goods — particularly onions, tomatoes and chickpeas — are soaring as vendors bemoan a lack of supplies from the flooded breadbasket provinces of Sindh and Punjab.
The met office said the country as a whole had received twice the usual monsoon rainfall, but Balochistan and Sindh had more than four times the average of the last three decades.
Padidan, a small town in Sindh, was drenched by more than 1.2 meters (47 inches) of rain since June, making it the wettest place in the country.
Across Sindh, thousands of displaced people are camped alongside elevated highways and railway tracks — often the only dry spots as far as the eye can see.
More are arriving daily at Sukkur’s city ring road, belongings piled on boats and tractor trollies, looking for shelter until the floodwaters recede.
Sukkur Barrage supervisor Aziz Soomro told AFP the main headway of water was expected to arrive around September 5, but was confident the 90-year-old sluice gates would cope.
The barrage diverts water from the Indus into 10,000 km of canals that make up one of the world’s biggest irrigation schemes, but the farms it supplies are now mostly under water.
The only bright spark was the latest weather report.
“Dry weather is forecasted for this week and there is no chance of significant rains,” said met office spokesman Zaheer Ahmed Babar.


PM Modi votes as India’s marathon election heats up

Updated 07 May 2024
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PM Modi votes as India’s marathon election heats up

  • Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to win India’s election convincingly
  • Indian PM has stepped up rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in bid to rally voters

AHMEDABAD, India: Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi cast his ballot Tuesday in India’s ongoing general election after giving several inflammatory campaign speeches accused of targeting minority Muslims.

Turnout so far has dropped significantly compared with the last national poll in 2019, with analysts blaming widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.

Modi walked out of a polling booth early morning in the city of Ahmedabad while holding up a finger marked with indelible ink, flanked by security personnel and cheered by supporters.

“Voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” Modi said on social media platform X, referring to India’s lower house of parliament.

“Urging everyone to do so as well and strengthen our democracy.”

The premier’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win the election convincingly, but since the vote began on April 19, Modi has stepped up his rhetoric on India’s main religious divide in a bid to rally voters.

He has used public speeches to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” prompting condemnation from opposition politicians, who have complained to election authorities.

Modi has also accused Congress, the main party in the disparate opposition alliance competing against him, of planning to reallocate the nation’s wealth to Muslim households.

“This is the first time in a long time that he is so direct,” said Hartosh Singh Bal, executive editor at news magazine The Caravan.

“I haven’t seen him be this directly bigoted, usually he alludes to bigotry,” he added.

“The comments on wealth redistribution are targeting something from the Congress manifesto that just does not exist and that is frankly quite unfortunate.”

Modi remains widely popular a decade after coming to power, in large part due to his government’s positioning the nation’s majority faith at the center of its politics, despite India’s officially secular constitution.

In January, the prime minister presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the site of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu zealots decades earlier.

Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across India, with extensive television coverage and street parties.

Modi’s brand of Hindu-nationalist politics has in turn made India’s 220-million-plus Muslim population increasingly anxious about their future in the country.

The election commission has not sanctioned Modi for his remarks despite its code of conduct prohibiting campaigning on “communal feelings” such as religion.

India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.

Much of southern Asia was hit by a heatwave last week that saw several constituencies vote in searing temperatures.

In the city of Mathura, not far from the Taj Mahal, temperatures crossed 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) on polling day, and election commission figures showed turnout dropping nearly nine points to 52 percent from five years earlier.

An analysis of turnout data published by The Hindu newspaper concluded it was too early to determine whether hot weather was impacting voter participation.

But India’s weather bureau has forecast more heatwave spells to come in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.

High temperatures were forecast for several locations voting on Tuesday including the states of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

Years of scientific research have found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in the Indian election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.


Ground invasion of Rafah would be ‘intolerable,’ UN chief warns

Updated 07 May 2024
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Ground invasion of Rafah would be ‘intolerable,’ UN chief warns

  • Israel has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials

UNITED NATIONS, United States: A ground invasion of Rafah would be “intolerable,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday, calling on Israel and Hamas “to go an extra mile” to reach a ceasefire deal.
“This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and a ground invasion in Rafah would be intolerable because of its devastating humanitarian consequences, and because of its destabilizing impact in the region,” Guterres said as he received Italian President Sergio Mattarella.

 


UK military personnel’s data accessed in hack, BBC reports

Updated 07 May 2024
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UK military personnel’s data accessed in hack, BBC reports

  • MPs could be informed about the development in the Commons on Tuesday

Some personal information in a payroll system used by Britain’s defense department has been accessed in a data breach, the BBC reported on Monday.
The system was managed by an external contractor and no operational Ministry of Defense data was obtained, the broadcaster said, adding that the department took the system off-line immediately.
Information like names and bank details of current and some former members of the Royal Navy, Army and Air Force was compromised, according to the report.
The Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment outside working hours.
MPs could be informed about the development in the Commons on Tuesday, the report added.


Russia says it takes control of two more settlements in eastern Ukraine

Updated 07 May 2024
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Russia says it takes control of two more settlements in eastern Ukraine

  • Russia has made slow but steady advances since taking Avdiivka in February, with a string of villages in the area falling to Moscow’s forces

MOSCOW: Russian forces have taken control of the settlements of Soloviove in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and Kotliarivka further north in the Kharkiv region, the defense ministry said on Monday.
Ukraine’s military made no mention of either locality in its evening General Staff report. Kharkiv Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Monday that Kotliarivka, located near the town of Kupiansk, was one of several locations to come under Russian shelling.
But Ukrainian bloggers appeared to acknowledge that both villages were in Russian hands.
DeepState, a popular forum on the war, noted on Saturday that Kotliarivka had been captured by Russian forces and on Sunday said the neighboring village of Kyslivka was also in Russian hands.
DeepState reported that Soloviove, northwest of the Russian-held town of Avdiivka, had been taken by Russian forces last week.
Russia has made slow but steady advances since taking Avdiivka in February, with a string of villages in the area falling to Moscow’s forces.


UNICEF warns 600,000 children face ‘catastrophe’ in Rafah

Updated 06 May 2024
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UNICEF warns 600,000 children face ‘catastrophe’ in Rafah

  • Calling again for a ceasefire and safe access for humanitarian organizations, the agency highlighted there are some 78,000 infants under age two sheltering in the city, along with 175,000 children under five who are affected by infectious disease
  • Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory

NEW YORK: Some 600,000 children packed into Gaza’s Rafah city face “further catastrophe,” UNICEF warned on Monday, urging against their forced relocation after Israel ordered an evacuation ahead of its long-threatened ground invasion.
“Given the high concentration of children in Rafah ... UNICEF is warning of a further catastrophe for children, with military operations resulting in very high civilian casualties and the few remaining basic services and infrastructure they need to survive being totally destroyed,” the UN children’s agency said in a statement.
It said Gaza’s youth were already “on the edge of survival,” with many in Rafah — where the agency said the population has soared to 1.2 million people, half of them children — already displaced multiple times and with nowhere else to go.
“More than 200 days of war have taken an unimaginable toll on the lives of children,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“Rafah is now a city of children, who have nowhere safe to go in Gaza,” she said, warning that a large-scale military operation by Israel would bring “chaos and panic, and at a time where (children’s) physical and mental states are already weakened.”
UNICEF estimates that Rafah’s population has swelled to nearly five times its normal figure of 250,000 residents.
Calling again for a ceasefire and safe access for humanitarian organizations, the agency highlighted there are some 78,000 infants under age two sheltering in the city, along with 175,000 children under five who are affected by infectious disease.
Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Israel has conducted a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,735 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run
territory’s Health Ministry.
Of that toll, more than 14,000 are children, the ministry has said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to send ground troops into Rafah regardless of any truce, despite concerns from the US, other countries, and aid groups.
Hamas official Izzat Al-Rashiq said in a statement that any Israeli operation in Rafah would put the truce talks in jeopardy.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the evacuation order was a “dangerous escalation” that would have consequences.
“The US administration, alongside the occupation, bears responsibility for this terrorism,” the official said.
Hamas said later in a statement that any offensive in Rafah would not be a “picnic” for Israeli forces and said it was fully prepared to defend Palestinians there.
Aid agencies have warned that the evacuation order will lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster in the crowded coastal enclave of 2.3 million people reeling from seven months of war.
“Forcing 1 million displaced Palestinians from Rafah to evacuate without a safe destination is not only unlawful but would lead to catastrophic consequences,” British charity ActionAid said.
Nick Maynard, a British surgeon trying to leave Gaza on Monday, said in a voice message from the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing into Egypt: “Two huge bombs have just gone off immediately outside the crossing. There’s a lot of gunfire as well about 100 meters from us. We are very unclear whether we will get out.”
“Driving through Rafah, the tension was palpable with people evacuating as rapidly as they could.”
Witnesses said the areas in and around Rafah where Israel wants to move people are already crowded with little room for more tents.
“The biggest genocide, the biggest catastrophe, will take place in Rafah. I call on the whole Arab world to interfere for a ceasefire — let them interfere and save us from what we are in,” said Aminah Adwan, a displaced Palestinian.
Israel has been threatening to launch incursions in Rafah, which it says harbors thousands of Hamas fighters and potentially dozens of hostages.
Victory is impossible without taking Rafah, it says.