Skip to content

Hundreds killed in flooding

Floods and landslides across Asia plunged millions into misery Sunday as rubble-strewn waters killed at least 127 in northwestern China and four million Pakistanis faced food shortages amid their country’s worst-ever flooding.
Pakistan Floods
A Pakistani flood affected man holds his child as he stands in a queue to get relief food at a camp in Risalpur

BEIJING — Floods and landslides across Asia plunged millions into misery Sunday as rubble-strewn waters killed at least 127 in northwestern China and four million Pakistanis faced food shortages amid their country’s worst-ever flooding.

In Indian Kashmir, rescuers raced to find 500 people still missing in flash floods that have already killed 132, while North Korea’s state media said high waters had destroyed thousands of homes and damaged crops.

Terrified residents fled to high ground or upper storeys of apartment buildings in China’s Gansu province after a debris-blocked river overflowed during the night, smashing buildings and overturning cars.

An estimated 2,000 more people were missing in the latest deluge in a summer that has seen China’s worst seasonal flooding in a decade.

Worst hit was the county seat of Zhouqu in the province’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where houses buckled and streets were smeared with a metre of mud and water.

The landslides struck after heavy rains lashed China late Saturday, causing the Bailong River to burst its banks.

The devastation was worsened by flotsam that blocked the river upstream, creating a three-kilometre-long lake that overflowed and sent waves of mud, rocks and water crashing down on the town, ripping houses from their foundations and tearing six-storey apartment buildings in half.

Explosives experts were flying to the scene by helicopter to demolish the blockage and safely release potential flood waters ahead of more rain forecast through Wednesday.

China Central Television said 45,000 people had been evacuated, but the region’s remote, mountainous location was hampering the emergency response. Narrow roads prevented the movement of heavy equipment, forcing rescuers to rely on shovels, picks and buckets.

Around China, the country’s worst flooding in a decade has killed more than 1,100 people this year, with more than 600 still missing.

The floods have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions.

In Pakistan, 1,500 people have been killed and millions more left begging for help following the worst floods in the country’s history.

Prices of fruit and vegetable skyrocketed Sunday, with more than 400,000 hectares of crops destroyed and at least four million people in need of food assistance in the coming months.

Pakistan has worked with international partners to rescue more than 100,000 people and provide food and shelter to thousands more.

But the government has struggled to cope with the scale of a disaster that it estimates has affected 13 million people and could get worse as heavy rains lashed Pakistan again Sunday.

The swollen Indus River overflowed near the city of Sukkur in southern Sindh province on Sunday, submerging the nearby village of Mor Khan Jatoi with chest-high water and destroying many of its 1,500 mud homes.

In neighbouring India, rescuers dug through crushed homes and piles of mud searching for 500 people still missing after flash floods sent massive mudslides down remote desert mountainsides in Kashmir, officials said. The death toll rose to 132 with about 500 others injured.

The dead included at least five foreign tourists whose nationalities were not immediately known.

Thousands of army, police and paramilitary soldiers were also clearing roads to reach isolated villages in the Ladakh region cut off by Friday’s powerful thunderstorms, state police Chief Kuldeep Khoda said.

About 2,000 foreign tourists were in the area, a popular destination for adventure sports enthusiasts, when the storm hit, burying homes and toppling power and telecommunication towers.

North Korea’s state media said about 15,000 hectares of farmland were submerged and 5,500 homes destroyed or flooded after recent heavy rains.

However, South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said the damage did not appear to be serious compared to previous years. Flooding in North Korea in 2007 killed about 600 people, left another 100,000 homeless, and destroyed more than 11 per cent of the country’s crops.