Pakistan floods: Biggest lake subsides amid race to help victims

Water levels in Pakistan’s biggest lake are starting to recede, officials say, after last-ditch attempts to prevent it from bursting its banks.

Manchar Lake, in Sindh province, is dangerously full after record monsoons that inundated swathes of Pakistan.

Its banks were deliberately breached to protect surrounding areas and more than 100,000 people have been displaced.

Teams are racing to rescue thousands still stranded in Pakistan’s worst climate-induced disaster in years.

“We see the water is now starting to come down,” provincial minister Jam Khan Shoro said. “If we didn’t make the breaches, several towns with big populations would have been destroyed and many more people in danger.”

Floods in Pakistan have affected some 33 million people and caused at least 1,343 deaths, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Agency said.

Officials have said a little over a quarter of a million people are in shelters, a fraction of those who need help.

Damaged infrastructure is also hampering aid and rescue operations, which cannot keep pace with demand. Some connecting roads in Sindh province have either collapsed, are flooded or are backed up for days with queuing traffic.

Manchar Lake straddles two districts – Jamshoro and Dadu – with an urban population of more than 1 million.

Agencies