HEAVY monsoon rains triggered landslides and flash floods across northern Pakistan, leaving at least 169 people dead in the last 24 hours, national and local officials said on Friday (15).
The majority of the deaths, 150, were recorded in mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.
Nine more people were killed in Pakistan Kashmir, while five died in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, it said.
The majority of those killed have died in flash floods and collapsing houses.
Five others, including two pilots, were killed when a Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government helicopter crashed due to bad weather during a mission to deliver relief goods, the chief minister of the province, Ali Amin Gandapur, said.
The provincial government has declared the severely affected mountainous districts of Buner, Bajaur, Mansehra and Battagram as disaster-hit areas.
In Bajaur, a tribal district abutting Afghanistan, a crowd amassed around an excavator trawling a mud-soaked hill, AFP photos showed.
Funeral prayers began in a paddock nearby, with people grieving in front of several bodies covered by blankets.
The meteorological department has issued a heavy rain alert for the northwest, urging people to avoid "unnecessary exposure to vulnerable areas".
In Indian Kashmir, rescuers pulled bodies from mud and rubble on Friday after a flood crashed through a Himalayan village, killing at least 60 people and washing away dozens more.
Scientists said climate change has made weather events around the world more extreme and more frequent.
Pakistan is one of the world's most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, and its population is contending with extreme weather events with increasing frequency.
The torrential rains that have pounded Pakistan since the start of the summer monsoon, described as "unusual" by authorities, have killed more than 320 people, nearly half of them children.
In July, Punjab, home to nearly half of Pakistan's 255 million people, recorded 73 per cent more rainfall than the previous year and more deaths than in the entire previous monsoon.
(With inputs from AFP)
