SUKKUR: Three sisters under the age of five were killed and their mother and aunt sitting beside them were injured when the wall of their home collapsed amid heavy rain in Malang Jagirani village of Shikarpur district on Tuesday.

Lightning also killed two women in separate incidents in Badin district as moderate to heavy rains continued to pound upper Sindh districts of Sukkur, Shikarpur, Ghotki, Kandhkot-Kashmore and Khairpur districts as well as Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Badin and some other districts of southern Sindh for a third consecutive day, Tuesday.

The three under-five sisters — Dua, Soonhan and Arifa — daughters of Hafeezullah Jag­irani, died when the wall of his house collapsed on the children’s cot in Malang Jagirani village.

The girls’ mother and an aunt sitting beside the cot were critically injured in the incident.

Flooding worsens in many upper, southern Sindh districts; power utilities fail to control outages

Residents of the village said they retrieved the girls’ bodies and the injured women from under the debris and rushed them to a nearby hospital, where doctors provided them emergency treatment and then referred the two women to the Sukkur Civil Hospital due to their critical condition.

Lightning kills two women

Two women died after they were hit by lightning in Bhano Bheel and Abdul Ghani Jatt villages of Badin district amid a heavy spell of rain.

Thirty-year-old Ms Bhagi was killed and her six-month-old son was injured in Bhano Bheel village whereas 50-year-old Ms Jatlan was killed in Abdul Ghani Jatt village. The injured infant was admitted to Badin Civil Hospital for treatment.

Rain causes breach in canal

In Mirpurkhas city, rainwater formed pools on main roads and streets and raised level of flooding in low-lying areas, forcing traffic to remain off roads.

Continuous heavy rain in the district swelled Doso Minor, fed through Mithrao Canal, and caused it to develop a 50-foot-wide breach near Doulatabad, which further added to the rainwater already flooding hundreds of acres of farmland and several villages.

The deluge gushing from the breach entered Ghulam Mohammad Dars, Lal Bux Kapri, Umer Marri and other villages forcing their residents to move to safe places along with their cattle heads.

The affected villagers said they had informed the local irrigation officials about the breach but no one came to their help. They had to start plugging of the breach on a self-help basis without any machinery, technical staff or labourers, they said.

They said that the same canal had developed a breach at RD-32 a couple of days back which was later plugged by affected villagers. If the irrigation officials did not come to their rescue they wou­ld suffer huge losses, they said.

Prolonged power breakdown in the wake of rains disrupted water supply and drainage, causing gutters to overflow on roads and streets in many localities. The outage greatly inconvenienced indoor and outdoor pati­ents at government hospitals.

People started clearing their areas of rainwater in the absence of sanitation workers in many localities.

Marooned people take refuge on rooftops

Another spell of heavy rain in Hyderabad on the night of Monday-Tuesday added to rainwater already causing accumulated on main arteries and roundabouts and forced residents of flooded Pakistan Railways Colo­­ny on Makki Shah Road to take refuse on rooftops after rainwater entered their homes last night.

Met office recorded 87mm of rainfall at its city office, 82mm in Tandojam and 69mm at airport and Latifabad since Monday.

Electricity breakdown continued across the Hyderabad region with Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) trying in vain to normalise the system.

A Hesco spokesman said that around 51 feeders of the entire region remained without power supply due to rains in different areas.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2023