SHER SHAH, Pakistan (AP) — Officials say nearly 300,000 people have been evacuated in the past 48 hours from flood-hit areas of Pakistan's Punjab province following the latest flood alerts by India, officials said Wednesday.
The evacuations bring the total number of people displaced since last month to 1.3 million.
Floodwaters have submerged dozens of villages in Punjab's Muzaffargarh district, after earlier inundating Narowal and Sialkot, both near the border with India.
Authorities are also struggling to divert overflowing rivers onto farmlands to protect major cities, as part of one of the largest rescue and relief operations in the history of Punjab, which straddles eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.
Thousand of rescuers using boats are taking part in the relief and rescue operations, while the military has also been deployed to transport people and animals from inundated villages, said Arfan Ali Kathia, director-general of Punjab's Provincial Disaster Management Authority.
A new flood alert was shared with Pakistan by neighboring India through diplomatic channels early Wednesday, Kathia said. It was the second such alert in 24 hours following heavy rains and water releases from dams in India.
Kathia said the Ravi, Chenab and Sutlej rivers are all in high flood following torrential rains and upstream discharges.
Rescuers are also using drones to find people stranded on rooftops in the flood-hit areas. Kathia said more than 3.3 million people across 33,000 villages in the province have been affected so far. Damages are still being assessed and all those who lost homes and crops would be compensated by the Punjab government, he said.
Landslides and flooding have killed at least 29 people in India's Punjab state, home to more than 30 million people.
Tent villages are being set up and food and other essential items are being supplied to the flood-affected people, he said, though many survivors complained about a lack of government aid.
There are about 40,000 people in the relief camps, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. It remains unclear where the rest are sheltering.
Noor Mohammad, a 54-year-old farmer in Sher Shah village near Muzaffargarh district, said he hasn’t received any help.
“Frustrated over this days-long situation, I sent my family members to stay with relatives in the nearby area,” he said, standing on higher ground overlooking his flooded village.
Malik Ramzan, another displaced resident, said he chose to stay near his inundated home rather than enter a relief camp. “There are no liveable facilities in the camps,” he said. “Food isn’t delivered on time, and we are treated like beggars,” he said.
However, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif visited flood-hit areas in Muzaffargarh on Wednesday, meeting with displaced families at relief camps. Her visit came just hours after India issued the latest cross-border flood alert.
Last week's flooding mainly hit districts in Kasur, Bahawalpur and Narowal, where the deluge also submerged the shrine of Guru Nanak, located near the Indian border. However, authorities said the shrine is being reopened for pilgrims after water receded and the building was cleaned and restored to the pre-flood situation.
Pakistan began mass evacuations last month after India released water from overflowing dams into low-lying border regions.
The latest floods are the worst since 2022 when climate-induced flooding killed nearly 1,700 people in Pakistan.
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Associated Press writers Dogar in Lahore, Pakistan and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, contributed to this story.
Asim Tanveer And Babar Dogar, The Associated Press
