Flash floods kill 43 in northern Pakistan

Ursoon : Overnight flash floods killed at least 43 people in northern Pakistan, the majority in a remote village that did not receive an evacuation warning before the waters hit washing away most of the settlement, officials said Sunday.

The heavy monsoon rains began late Saturday and were concentrated mainly in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been badly affected by flooding in recent years that some scientists have linked to climate change.

The worst hit district was Chitral, on the country's northwest border with Afghanistan, where the flood waters killed 41 people in the village of Ursoon near the Afghan border, which is home to some 100 families, district mayor Maghfirat Shah told AFP.

Eighty-two homes in the village were affected by the waters, a rescue services statement said, with some of them swept away, along with a mosque and an army post.

"Sixteen of the dead were offering prayers in the mosque when it was swept away by the flood," said Latifur Rehman, a spokesman for the provincial disaster management authority.

At least eight of the victims were soldiers, and another eight bodies were swept over the border into Afghanistan, senior local official Osama Waraich said.

Rehman said a military-led rescue and relief operation was now underway, with helicopters being used to reach the affected people and provide them with tents, food and medical aid.

Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation, the charitable wing of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, were among the first at the scene providing relief.

An AFP reporter in Ursoon said survivors who had lost their homes were waiting for aid under open skies surrounded by mud and debris where their village once stood.

Nearby villages had received flood warnings from the local authorities, but Ursoon was not alerted in time, the reporter said.

Separately, two Chinese engineers were killed and five Pakistani workers injured when the heavy rains caused the roof of a construction site to collapse at Tarbela Dam, also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Rehman said.