Satellite images have revealed the damage caused by torrential rains and flooding that have submerged a third of Pakistan.
More than 1,100 people, including 380 children, have been killed and the United Nations has appealed for aid for what it described as an "unprecedented climate catastrophe".
The country received nearly 190 per cent more rain than the 30-year average in the quarter through August this year, totalling 390.7 millimetres.
In Rajanpur, in the Punjab province, a village appears completely surrounded by floodwaters in the images captured by Maxar Technologies.
Some buildings have been entirely submerged or washed away.
Army helicopters plucked stranded families and dropped food packages to inaccessible areas as the historic deluge, triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains, destroyed homes, businesses, infrastructure and crops.
An estimated 30 million people have been affected — 15 per cent of the 220-million-strong South Asian nation.
In Gudpur, also in Punjab province, the satellite images captured by Maxar show what was once neatly-divided fields washed away by flowing water and mud.
Pakistan's Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman said the unprecedented catastrophe had left a third of the country underwater.
"The extreme monsoon flooding tells us that there is no time to waste, the climate tipping point is here," she said.
Pakistan's main rivers, the Indus and the Swat, are still swollen and the National Disaster Management Authority warned emergency services to be on maximum alert, saying floodwaters on Wednesday could cause further damage.
Meteorologists have warned of more rains in the coming weeks.
Sindh province, with a population of 50 million, has been hardest hit, getting 466 per cent more rain than the 30-year average.
The Indus River, which flows down the middle of the country from its northern peaks to southern plains and through Sindh province, is flooded along almost its entire length.
Properties and fields along the Indus have been completely inundated.
The executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council, Abid Qaiyum Suleri, said Pakistan was experiencing its highest rainfall in at least three decades this year.
"Extreme weather patterns are turning more frequent in the region and Pakistan is not an exception," he said.
The United Nations issued an appeal on Tuesday for $160 million in emergency funding to help the millions of people affected by the flooding.
"Millions are homeless, schools and health facilities have been destroyed, livelihoods are shattered, critical infrastructure wiped out, and people’s hopes and dreams have washed away," UN secretary-general António Guterres said in a video message on Tuesday.
The UN said 72 districts across Pakistan had been declared "calamity-hit" so far, with that number expected to increase.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the aid "needs to be multiplied rapidly".
"I want to give one solemn pledge and a solemn commitment at my command that every penny will be spent in a very transparent fashion, every penny will reach the needy, there will be no waste at all," he said on Tuesday.
Sharif said he feared the devastation could potentially lead to an acute food shortage and add to skyrocketing inflation, which stood at 24.9 per cent in July.
ABC/wires
