PESHAWAR // The death toll from a severe storm in northwest Pakistan rose to at least 45 people and injured more than 200, authorities said on Monday.
Dubbed a “mini-cyclone”, intense rain and strong winds buffeted the city of Peshawar and adjacent districts late on Sunday, causing hundreds of homes to collapse, uprooting trees and downing electric poles.
Mushtaq Ghani, the information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, provided the latest toll on Monday, saying several hundred people had been hospitalised. The injured included nearly 100 children, according to officials.
Mr Ghani said thousands of people have been left homeless and crops have been washed away.
“The storm followed by heavy rain and hailstorm has severely damaged wheat crops and orchards,” he said.
Mr Ghani said authorities were estimating the losses and expressed fear that hundreds of cattle had been killed.
The wind, accompanied by heavy rain and hail late on Sunday, disrupted power supplies and telecommunications services and damaged infrastructure, said district official Riaz Mehsud.
Electricity was still suspended in Peshawar, the capital of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and in parts of two nearby districts, Nowshera and Charsadda.
Mr Ghani said at least 29 people were killed in Peshawar – 10 in Charsadda and five in Nowshera.
Aamir Afaq, a senior official of the provincial disaster management authority, confirmed the death toll and said that efforts were underway “to provide food, shelters and emergency medical services to [those affected]”.
Rescue workers were removing fallen trees while engineers from mobile phone companies were repairing the towers.
The injured overwhelmed Peshawar’s main Lady Reading Hospital, a spokesman said.
Heavy weather on Monday forced the Pakistani military to cancel two flights to Nepal taking supplies to survivors of Saturday’s earthquake. They were rescheduled to Tuesday.
On Sunday evening, flood waters from the torrential rain reached a depth of a metre in some parts of the city, which is home to more than three million people.
Winds reached up to 120 kph, said Lutfur Rehman, a local disaster management official.
“It was very unusual. It took people by surprise,” Mr Rehman said. Pakistan typically experiences such rains during its monsoon season in June and July.
Initial estimates had put the death toll at 26 with 180 injured.
The military has been called in to boost rescue efforts, using ground-penetrating radars, concrete cutters and sniffer dogs, according to a tweet by the army spokesman.
Safety standards, particularly in construction, are very lax in Pakistan.
Many of the more than 200 killed in last year’s heavy monsoon rains died after roofs collapsed.
Poor construction was also blamed for the collapse of the Margalla Towers apartment block in Islamabad in a 2005 earthquake which killed 78 people.
The city of Peshawar is also at the forefront of Pakistan’s battle against a homegrown militant insurgency that rose up in 2004 following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the migration of Al Qaeda and Taliban militants to the country’s border tribal areas.
* Agencies
