More than 1,300 people have been killed in the devastating floods that have already submerged a third of Pakistan, razing villages and displacing millions of people. The worst may be yet to come as the country’s largest freshwater lake, Manchar, threatens to overflow. FRANCE 24’s Shahzaib Wahla and Sonia Ghezali met some of the people who have lost everything in what have been described as the worst floods in Pakistan’s history.
In the city of Sehwan, in the Sind province in the south, workers are racing against the clock to reinforce a riverbank to keep the city safe from further damage. Many of the fields and houses alongside it are already several meters underwater.
"I used to live there, right next to the canal," Khalid Hussein, a local farmer, says pointing out to the water. “It's fully gone, all the crops. I come here every day to check the situation. It [the water] rises a few feet per day. We're afraid that the bank will break."
The Sind highways are lined with makeshift camps set up by people who have had to flee the flooding. According to the World Health Organization, some 6.5 million Pakistanis are now in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
Rukhshana recounts how she and her family had to flee their village barefoot as water entered their village in the middle of the night. They had to leave everything they own behind.
"We don't even have any flour or fresh water, nothing to eat. We are forced to beg, my little daughter went to beg in the street today."
To watch the full report, click on the live-player above.
