• Monsoon rains have hit Pakistan since mid-June, leading to floods and humanitarian disaster.
  • Over 1,000 people have died in the floods, government officials said Sunday.
  • Large parts of Pakistan remain submerged as heavy rains continue.

Pakistan is deep in crisis from a monsoon season of brutal flooding that has killed more than 1,000 people.

The National Disaster Management Authority on Sunday gave an updated death toll of 1,033 people since heavy rains began in mid-June.

It said that 119 of the deaths had taken place in the preceding 24 hours.

Footage uploaded to Twitter on Friday by Asif Shahzad shows flash flooding causing the collapse of a two-storey building in Swat, a district in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Officials said that 226 people have been killed by flooding in the province, and the government there recently declared a state of emergency in Swat.

Over 20 million have been displaced from their homes by heavy rain, which has caused the Kabul and Indus rivers to flood, leaving large parts of Pakistan underwater.

Pakistan has never seen this level of devastation from flooding before, according to senator Sherry Rehman - who said the crisis is a direct consequence of climate change.

"It's a merciless, unrelenting, torrential monsoon - we've never seen anything like this before," said Rehman, who is Pakistan's climate-change minister, in a Sunday interview with the UK's Channel 4 News

"Over 146 bridges have collapsed in the country, over 3,000 kilometers of road has been cut off."

"It's not even possible to start rebuilding while people are out there waiting for rescue," she added. "We're at the ground zero of a climate dystopia."

Rehman shared a video of flooding in Balochistan in southwestern Pakistan. Her footage showed a large stretch of land entirely submerged, with emergency helicopters struggling to find dry land.

Balochistan has been badly affected by monsoon flash flooding, with 226 people killed in the province according to officials.

 

Rehman also shared footage showing the Madyan bridge in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa inundated with water. 

She said that the government had raised the level of the bridge by 5 meters after heavy flooding in 2010 - but that water levels are now so high it looks likely to collapse again.

Journalist Mubashir Zaidi shared a video showing the destruction of infrastructure in southern Pakistan, where floods swept away a stretch of road.

Sindh, in southeastern Pakistan, has suffered the worst death toll from the crisis, with 347 dead since mid-June, according to the official toll.

Families in Pakistan have gone to desperate lengths to escape the flooding. A video uploaded to Twitter by the UK newspaper The Independent Sunday showed one family using a crude system of ropes and a bed frame to carry vulnerable people over a street that had become a raging torrent of floodwater.

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