Peshawar - Heavy rains followed by strong winds killed at least 27 people, including eight children, in northwest Pakistan, officials said Sunday.
The storms hit four districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province late Saturday, with five siblings aged between two and 11 among the dead. "At least 12 people were buried alive after the roofs and walls of their houses collapsed," Taimur Ali Khan, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority, told AFP.
More than 140 people were injured and more than 200 livestock died, he said.
Authorities have declared an emergency in all four districts. Meanwhile, a cyclone is making its way across the Arabian Sea toward the coastlines of Pakistan and India, expected to make landfall at the end of the week.
Pakistani authorities said they would begin evacuating between 8,000 and 9,000 families from along the coastline of Sindh province, including in the mega port city of Karachi, home to around 20 million people. The army will be deployed from Monday to assist. The cyclone could bring winds, storm surges, and urban flooding from Tuesday evening as it approaches, the disaster management agency said Sunday. "Fishermen are advised not to venture into the open sea until the (weather) system is over by June 17," the agency said.
In neighboring India, the Meteorological Department reported Sunday that the storm would likely cross the Saurashtra and Kutch areas of western Gujarat state as well as adjacent Pakistani coasts around noon on Thursday.
It warned it would likely make landfall as a "very severe cyclonic storm with a maximum sustained wind speed of 125-135 kmph, gusting to 150 kmph (93 miles per hour)".
Scientists say climate change is making seasonal rains heavier and more unpredictable. Pakistan, which has the world's fifth largest population, is responsible for only 0.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions but is one of the most vulnerable nations to extreme weather caused by global warming.
Last summer, unprecedented monsoon rains put a third of the country under water, damaging two million homes and killing more than 1,700 people.
In India, natural catastrophes are forecast to cause more misery as the planet's climate warms and make weather more volatile.
India's western states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, and other coastal regions are on alert after meteorologists warned that a cyclonic storm over the Arabian sea would intensify over the next 24 hours.
Authorities have told fishing communities to halt operations for the next five days in the eastern and central Arabian sea, and along the Indian Saurastra and Kutch region, ahead of Cyclone Biparjoy.
The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), which categorized Biparjoy as a "very severe storm", said at 08:30 a.m. IST (0300 GMT) on Saturday the weather system was centered about 620 kilometers (385.25 miles) west-southwest off the financial capital Mumbai. "It is very likely to intensify further and move north-northeast wards gradually during the next 24 hours," the IMD said in a statement on Saturday. It warned of heavy rainfall at isolated places in the state of Kerala and coastal Karnataka region in the next three days.
The IMD had expected monsoon rains to arrive over the southernmost state of Kerala on June 4, but the formation of Biparjoy has delayed that.
In Gujarat, the 13 coastal districts of South Gujarat, the Saurashtra peninsula, and Kutch have been put on alert.
"We are fully prepared to deal with any situation," Kamal Dayani, additional chief secretary in the state revenue department, told Reuters. Teams from the National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the districts likely to be affected by the storm. Unstable structures, such as hoardings, have been removed and the electricity department is on standby for power supply disruptions.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
