Athara Hazari dyke blown up at three places to divert floodwaters

JHANG: Three breaches were created by using explosives at Athara Hazari dyke in a move protect the Trimmu Headworks.

The water flow at the Trimmu Headworks, where Jhelum and Chenab rivers converge, was over 500,000 cusecs.

Official sources said over 700,000 cusecs of water was approaching the Trimmu Headworks and over 400,000 cusecs of water in Jhelum River was also reaching there, simultaneously.

Over 300 villages of Athara Hazari and Ahmedpur Sial Tehsils had been inundated while water at certain points was about 20 feet deep.

The district administration had made all possible rescue and relief arrangements while the victims were being shifted to safe places with the help of Rescue 1122 and army soldiers.

AFP adds:

In the central city of Jhang in Punjab, authorities deliberately breached an embankment to divert floodwaters, a senior provincial disaster management official told AFP.

"This breach was the last option to save the lives and property of residents in Jhang, this was a must to save the city," the official told AFP.

More than half a million people have been affected by the floods, the National Disaster Management Authority said.

The waters have swept away homes and destroyed roads and swathes of farmland in a chilling reminder of the damage wrought by 2010 floods, the worst in the country´s history, that killed more than 1,700 people and affected 18 million.

A senior rescue official in Lahore told AFP that some 100 boats were rescuing residents and more than 4,000 people had so far been evacuated in Jhang.

At least 256 people have been killed nationwide, according to the National Disaster Management Authority, and 581,193 "affected" -- a term that covers everything from loss of property to bereavement.

Rescue officials told AFP they evacuated a total of 33,070 flood victims in Punjab province.

"Around 324 rescue boats are participating in operations," an official added.

The army meanwhile has been carrying out rescue operations, deploying seven helicopters and 90 boats in Jhang and the nearby district of Chinot to rescue some 2,500 people, according to a statement.

Authorities were also preparing explosives to breach more embankments further downstream to protect the major city of Multan, lawmaker Chaudhry Abdul Waheed Arain said, in a move that could flood some 200 villages.

Nusrat Mai, a woman from the village of Basti Ghota near Multan, told AFP from a makeshift camp: "The floods have completely destroyed us, boats came to rescue us... we don´t have food and we don´t have anything."

In Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), where the flooding began, more than 20,000 people living in mud houses in remote areas are now facing food shortages after roads were destroyed.