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Pakistan flooding kills 125 people as soldiers aid in rescue effort

Pakistani boys walk past houses damaged by flooding on the outskirts of Islamabad on Sept. 6.
(Anjum Naveed / Associated Press)
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More than 125 people have been killed and 280 injured in four days of torrential monsoon rains in Pakistan, officials said Saturday, as soldiers deployed to devastated areas to aid in the rescue operation.

The rains hit the Pakistani section of the Kashmir region and parts of the nation’s largest state, Punjab, causing huge losses to property, cattle and crops.

The monsoon weather system was reportedly weakening, but Pakistani meteorological officials said the capital, Islamabad, had already received more than 12 inches of rain in 48 hours while Lahore, the second largest city, received almost 14 inches.

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FOR THE RECORD

12:30 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Syed Bazil Naqvi, the information minister of the Pakistani side of Kashmir, estimated the flood damage to his region at $150 million. He put the figure at $15 million.

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The rescue effort has been hampered by a lack of capacity in Pakistan’s civilian emergency relief agencies. The Pakistani army has sent dozens of boats and helicopters to rescue hundreds of stranded people, and on Saturday took control of a dam on the Chenab River in Punjab where the flooding was at its highest level in more than two decades.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with federal disaster officials Saturday and ordered an acceleration of the relief and rescue efforts.

Ahmed Kamal, a senior official in the National Disaster Management Authority, said the majority of deaths occurred in collapsed houses. Seventy people were killed in Punjab, where more than 100 villages were submerged by the flood waters and 5,000 acres of crops were destroyed.

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Nationwide, more than 1,600 houses had collapsed and another 2,300 were at least partially damaged, most in Pakistani Kashmir, Kamal said.

Shahid Mehmud, 40, a resident of the Sialkot district of Punjab, described it as the worst flood of his life.

“There is only water everywhere,” Mehmud said by phone. Three members of a family including a woman and child were killed in his village when their house gave way, he said, and dozens of other homes were damaged.

“My standing crops of 100 acres are inundated, our cattle are without fodder,” he said. “It is so pathetic.”

Lahore, the capital of Punjab, was almost entirely submerged as the rains surpassed the city’s drainage capacity. More than 20 people were reported killed, crushed in their homes or electrocuted, officials said.

Syed Bazil Naqvi, the information minister of the Pakistani side of Kashmir, which lies on the border with India and is disputed between the two countries, said that floods had destroyed many of the region’s roads and cut off much of the province from the rest of the country. He estimated the damage in Pakistani Kashmir at $15 million so far.

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Sahi is a Times special correspondent.

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