Enlarge imageShahid Gul Yusufzai
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - More than 50 people have been killed after a dam burst in remote southwest Pakistan, adding to a mounting death toll following the country’s heaviest rains in more than a decade, provincial officials say.
The army has deployed troops and helicopters to help rescuers reach people marooned by flood waters after the Shadikor dam in Baluchistan province burst on Thursday, and officials said on Friday at least five villages had been submerged.
The torrential rain and snowfall has claimed least 37 other lives in various parts of the country over the past week, with many more people reported injured and missing.
Most of the fatalities were caused by avalanches, flash floods or by collapsing roofs.
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In the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), near the border with Afghanistan, at least 30 soldiers were caught in an avalanche in the remote Teerah valley on Thursday and there was no word on their fate, military officials said.
But the greatest alarm was over the burst dam near Pasni, some 800 km (500 miles) south of the provincial capital, Quetta.
"More than 50 people have been killed in the dam burst," said provincial minister Sher Jan Baluch, who hails from Pasni.
Ten of them died when flood waters swept away the bus they were travelling in, but 20 other passengers survived.
Baluch said more than 1,400 people had been saved by rescue workers and troops in the Pasni area and other parts of Baluchistan.
"Most of them took shelter on higher ground and some climbed trees to save their lives."
In Peshawar, the provincial capital of NWFP, four people, including a mother and her three children, were killed when the roof of their house caved in on Thursday night.
Elsewhere, two soldiers were killed by an avalanche in the Neepa valley of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on Thursday.
Pakistan has seen its heaviest rains and snowfalls for 16 years, according to the Meteorological Department.
Officials said flash floods swept away several bridges on the main coastal highway linking Baluchistan to the southern port city of Karachi.
Remote northern areas, where the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges meet, have been cut off, with roads buried under several feet of snow and the Chitral valley particularly badly affected.
The Karakoram Highway, linking Pakistan and China, has been blocked and flights have been suspended since February 3, said residents of Gilgit, the main town in the Northern Areas.
Weather officials said the intensity of rains had subsided in Baluchistan but would continue in most of the rest of Pakistan for the next 24 hours.
