More than 100 die in Pakistan heatwave
At least 129 people have died in recent sweltering temperatures in Pakistan, many of them in eastern Punjab province, the health ministry said today.
Over the past nine or 10 days, 105 people have died in Punjab, said Javed Asghar, a health ministry official in the province’s capital of Lahore, revising an earlier toll of 71.
Sunstroke, dehydration and food poisoning caused most of the deaths, Asghar said.
Temperatures have recently soared as high as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in some parts of Punjab, and the capital, Islamabad, experienced its hottest weather in 11 years on Saturday at 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), said Imran Siddiqi, an official at Pakistan’s Meteorological Department.
In Islamabad and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi, 25 people – many of them elderly labourers – suffered sunstroke and five of them died, the English-language The News daily reported today.
A further 19 deaths have been reported in the southern Sindh, south-western Baluchistan and North West Frontier provinces.
In the neighbouring countries of India and Bangladesh, a heat wave has killed more than 400 in the past two months.
Siddiqi said monsoon rains expected later this week should break the hot spell across Pakistan.
