BILAWALPUR, Aug 29(ABC): At least 13 people died on Monday when a boat carrying 30 flood victims capsized in swollen Indus River near Bilawalpur village in Sindh’s Sehwan city.
According to the police, the people who drowned were migrating from submerged villages to save their lives when the unfortunate accident took place, reported Express News.
Sindh police officials along with Pakistan Navy rescued seven people while the search for the remaining missing victims is underway. The police official said a child and women were among those who died in the incident.
In a separate incident, a six-storey building collapsed in Pir Jo Goth, a small city in Sindh’s Kahirpur district, in which several people sustained injuries.
The rescue teams have expressed the fear of casualties in the incident and said that the Rangers teams were also aiding in rescue operation to pull people trapped under debris.
They said 20 people have been pulled out from the collapsed building and shifted to the hospital. Five families lived in the building.
A huge relief operation was underway across the country and international aid began trickling in as authorities struggled to deal with monsoon flooding that has affected more than 33 million people.
Officials said 1,061 people have died since June when the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have been cut off by flood-swollen rivers washing away roads and bridges.
Officials said this year’s flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — destroying or badly damaging nearly a million homes.