Pakistan’s Punjab province battered by its biggest flood with 2 million people at risk

Pakistan’s Punjab province faces its worst flood ever, affecting 2 million people as three rivers hit record levels. Officials blame climate change and India’s dam water release.

Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province is dealing with the biggest flood in its history, a senior official said Sunday, as water levels of rivers rise to all-time highs.

Global warming has worsened monsoon rains this year in Pakistan, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, according to a new study. Downpours and cloudbursts have triggered flash floods and landslides across the mountainous north and northwest in recent months.

Residents in eastern Punjab have also experienced abnormal amounts of rain, as well as cross-border flooding after India released water from swollen rivers and its overflowing dams into Pakistan’s low-lying regions.

“This is the biggest flood in the history of the Punjab. The flood has affected 2 million people. It’s the first time that the three rivers — Sutlej, Chenab, and Ravi — have carried such high levels of water,” the senior minister for the province, Maryam Aurangzeb, told a press conference on Sunday.

Local authorities were evacuating people and using educational institutions, police and security facilities as rescue camps, she said. Pakistani TV channels showed people clambering into rescue boats and sailing across fully submerged farmland to safety. Others loaded belongings into boats, salvaging what remained from damaged homes, now abandoned.

“The Foreign Ministry is collecting data regarding India’s deliberate release of water into Pakistan,” Aurangzeb said. There was no immediate comment from India.

India had alerted Pakistan to the possibility of cross-border flooding last week, the first public diplomatic contact between the rivals since a crisis brought them close to war in May.

Punjab, home to some 150 million people, is a vital part of the country’s agricultural sector and is Pakistan’s main wheat producer. Ferocious flooding in 2022 wiped out huge swathes of crops in the east and south of the country, leading Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to warn that the country faced food shortages.