Enlarge imageBy Shahid Gul Yusufzai
QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - More than 130 people have been killed across Pakistan in the heaviest rains in 16 years that caused a dam to burst.
Authorities rushed thousands of troops to join rescue operations in the remote southwestern Baluchistan province, where some 20,000 people had been affected by the floods, said Raziq Bugti, a government spokesman in the province said on Friday.
Officials said at least 60 people died on Thursday night after Baluchistan’s Shadikor dam burst, sweeping through villages near the coastal town of Pasni. More than 40 more died from heavy rains in other parts of the province.
Some reports said hundreds were missing, though officials said there were no reliable estimates.
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"Relief operations are in full swing. Army, paramilitary rangers and coast guards are trying to pull out people stranded in the flood water," Bugti told Reuters.
Officials said at least five villages, home to around 7,000 people, had been submerged by waters that poured through the 35 metre (115 foot) high and 300 metre long embankment of the dam, constructed just two years ago.
"Sixty bodies have been recovered in the Pasni area. They were all killed due to the dam burst," provincial minister Sher Jan Baluch told Reuters.
Baluch said 4,000 army and paramilitary troops were involved in the relief efforts.
The navy was also called in to help, with at least three bridges along the main coastal highway washed away, and 11 helicopters flew over flooded areas to help rescue trapped people.
MANY INJURED OR MISSING
The torrential rain and snowfall has claimed more than 30 other lives elsewhere in Pakistan 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.
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.
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."
Pakistan has seen its heaviest rains and snowfalls for 16 years, according to the Meteorological Department.
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.
Another three people died, and two are missing, after an avalanche hit them in Astore valley near Gilgit, the main town in Pakistan’s mountainous Northern Areas, police said.
The 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.
