Two days before his wedding, Noor Muhammad spoke with his mother in Qadir Nagar village. Hours later, she and 23 relatives were killed in the floods that swept through Pakistan’s Buner district.
“I cannot explain how happy she was,” he said, standing near the rubble of the family’s 36-room house. “The flood came, it swept away everything — home, mother, sister, brother, my uncle, my grandfather and children.”
No place has been hit harder by the recent floods than Buner, a mountainous district where over 200 people have died since August 15. Nationwide, the disaster authority reports the death toll has climbed to 776.
Among those caught in the tragedy is Muhammad, 25. He works as a laborer in Malaysia and had arrived home for his wedding on the very day the disaster began to unfold.
Instead of celebrating, he attended 24 funerals, including those of his mother, a brother and a sister. His father and another brother survived only because they were traveling to Islamabad to pick him up from the airport. His fiancée survived as her home was outside the worst-hit area.
Freak monsoon storms have devastated northwestern Pakistan, with officials blaming the storm’s intensity on climate change. In the hardest-hit areas, the destruction was absolute. “The flood and storm have swept everything away,” said one survivor. While military teams have rescued over 25,000, the search for the missing goes on.
Officials warn that more storms may arrive, with two additional monsoon spells expected until September 10.
Standing in the debris of his family home, Noor Muhammad said only four of the 28 people who lived there survived. “What else can we say? It’s God’s will.”
