Lahore/Karachi, Aug 13: Heavy rains in Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Kashmir on Friday left 22 people dead, destroyed crops and marooned a large number of people.
 An official of the Disaster Management Authority said that most of the casualties were reported from Sindh where torrential rains on Thursday night wreaked havoc in several districts.
 Fifteen people died in Mirpurkhas and two children in Sanghar’s Darya Khan Dhari village when roofs of their thatched houses caved in.
 Intermittent rains caused flood-like situation in several areas of lower Sindh, destroying cotton and other crops.
 In Lahore, a boy was killed and five people were injured after roofs of their houses collapsed during the torrential rains which hit the city in the afternoon. The rains virtually kept the city paralysed for several hours.
 The Flood Forecasting Division (FFD) in Lahore said river flows might go up because fairly widespread rain was likely in catchment areas in the next 24 to 36 hours.
 FFD’s Chief Meteorologist Riaz Khan told Dawn that a change in the direction of the low pressure might cause fairly widespread thundershowers over upper catchments of rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and Sutlej.
 He said India released 85,000 cusecs of water in the Chenab River from its Akhnoor Dam on Friday, causing a low flood in it. The flow of the river at Marala was 108,000 cusecs. The Kabul River was also in low flood at Nowshera.
 The FFD forecast moderate flooding in D.G. Khan and Rajanpur districts because of moderate to heavy rains at times in the Suleiman Range.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 13 Aug 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 13 Aug 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 IST