ISLAMABAD (AP) — The loss of life toll from practically six weeks of monsoon rains and floods throughout Pakistan has risen to 154, officers mentioned Thursday, as downpours continued in a lot of the nation, inundating some villages.

Greater than 1,500 properties have been broken since July 1, when the monsoon rains started, the Nationwide Catastrophe Administration Authority mentioned. Orchards in distant areas of the southwestern Baluchistan province had been broken, and rains flooded many streets within the jap metropolis of Lahore.

The Pakistan-administered portion of the disputed Himalayan area of Kashmir has additionally been battered by rains, inflicting landslides.

Most of the 154 deaths occurred within the jap Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces, in keeping with the catastrophe company and provincial authorities.

At the moment, greater than 2,000 persons are in aid camps in rain-affected areas within the southern Sindh province, officers mentioned.

On Thursday, the help group Worldwide Rescue Committee mentioned it’s getting ready to scale up its response in Pakistan with looming rains posing a menace to the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions.

“Our precedence is to make sure that affected communities obtain well timed and enough help to forestall this humanitarian disaster from deepening,” the group’s director in Pakistan, Shabnam Baloch, mentioned in a press release.

Pakistan is in the midst of the annual monsoon season, which runs from July by means of September. Scientists and climate forecasters blame local weather change for heavy rains lately.

To date this 12 months, Pakistan has acquired much less rain than in 2022, when climate-induced downpours swelled rivers and inundated at one level one-third of the nation, killing 1,739 folks and inflicting $30 billion in injury.