Hundreds killed within days in rain-related incidents

Nestled among the lush green mountains of Pakistan’s north, and with a river flowing serenely through its centre, Bishnoi was, until recently, a beautiful village.

But it had rained heavily on the morning of Friday, 15 August, and when the villagers woke early and went off to work they were unaware of how swiftly things were about to change.

According to locals, a sudden torrent of water came surging through Bishnoi, “bringing huge rocks with it and crushing buildings in its path, destroying the entire village”.

When BBC Urdu visited in the aftermath, the area was dotted with large stones, concrete blocks and uprooted trees. Without heavy machinery, rescue workers and locals were busy clearing the debris using small tools.

“There is a house under every stone. People try to look under these rocks to see if they can find someone,” local Israr Khan explained. “The houses are buried under the ground.”

Across the wider province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, at least 314 people have been killed and 156 injured due to rains and flash floods that began between Thursday and Friday night.

Buner district, where Bishnoi is located, is the worst-affected, with 217 fatalities, according to the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA).

Another local said many people had been killed in a house where wedding preparations were underway. Others told us there had been a total of 80 to 90 households in Bishnoi, most of them involved in farming.

An estimated 50% of the houses have been completely destroyed in the flood. The rest are no longer habitable.

Monsoon rains between June and September deliver about three-quarters of South Asia’s annual rainfall. Landslides and flooding are common, and 650 people have already died in this year’s season.

In Pakistan, at least 507 people have died and more than 700 have been injured in rain-related incidents since the monsoon started in late June, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

Punjab and parts of Islamabad are among the areas that have been battered by heavy downpours and flash floods so far this year. But neither have been hit harder than Pakistan’s mountainous north, home to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one of the most glaciated areas in the region.

Global warming is causing these glaciers to quickly thin and retreat, in turn making debris such as…